Structured Data, Smarter Insights: How AI Is Changing DSA

In digital shelf analytics (DSA), speed to insight is everything. But when your competitors’ data is messy, inconsistent, and spread across dozens of different retailer structures, how can you make sense of it fast enough to act?

That’s where Brandquad’s new AI-powered categorization comes in — designed to turn unstructured scraped data into clean, standardized product categories in seconds.

The Problem: Everyone Calls It Something Different

Retailers don’t speak the same language. One may list your shampoo under “Personal Care > Hair”, another might put it in “Beauty > Haircare”, and a third splits it into “Shampoo & Conditioner”. Multiply that inconsistency across five retailers, 20 categories, and hundreds of SKUs, and you’ve got a data normalization nightmare.

Even worse? Your competitors’ products are stuck in the same chaos. You want to analyze competitive pricing for “Shampoos,” but the very definition of that category shifts from site to site.

Result: You can’t compare apples to apples.
Impact: You waste time manually cleaning data — or worse, skip the analysis altogether.

The Solution: AI-Powered Categorization from Brandquad

Our new AI categorization engine was built to solve this exact problem for DSA users.

🔹 How it works:
Brandquad scrapes product data from retailer websites — titles, descriptions, and attributes — and uses AI models trained on industry-specific taxonomies to automatically assign each product to a consistent category. You can even apply your internal product hierarchy so that competitive products are mapped to the structure you use inside your business.

🔹 The result:
Within seconds, you get a clean, structured view of your entire competitive set. No spreadsheets. No dragging and dropping SKUs into folders. No waiting for manual cleanup.

Why AI Categorization Matters in DSA

1. Stop wasting time
Manual categorization across multiple retailers can take hours — every week. Our clients save that time and reinvest it in real analysis.

2. See the full competitive picture
You can’t track pricing, availability, or promo activity accurately unless your categories are clean. With AI categorization, you can analyze the real product landscape.

3. Compare like-for-like
Run category-level reports (e.g. “Hair Colorants” or “Electric Toothbrushes”) with confidence, knowing all products — yours and your competitors’ — are classified consistently.

4. Use your own logic
Don’t rely on how retailers organize shelves. Apply your own taxonomy, brand logic, or business structure, and let AI bring your competitors into that view.

Real Use Case: Category-Level Price Benchmarking

You want to understand how your premium moisturizer line is priced vs. competitors across five marketplaces. But your competitors are spread across:

• Beauty > Skincare > Face > Creams
• Personal Care > Moisturizers
• Health & Beauty > Face Creams

With Brandquad AI categorization, all relevant products are instantly grouped into Moisturizers (Face) based on their features — not just retailer tags. Within seconds, you get a clean chart of pricing gaps, promo frequency, and share of shelf. No data wrangling required.

Built into the Brandquad DSA Experience

AI categorization is now fully integrated into Brandquad’s DSA workflows — meaning you can:

• Filter by unified category across all tracked retailers
• Apply your internal structure for custom reporting
• Build dashboards and alerts using consistent category tags

And as with all our AI tools, it’s built to be flexible, transparent, and continuously learning.

Why We Built This

At Brandquad, we work closely with global brands who told us the same thing: “We have the data, but we spend hours just trying to clean it before we can use it.”

We built AI categorization to change that — to help your teams go from raw data to actionable insight in record time. Because data is only valuable when it’s usable.

Ready to Compare Apples to Apples?

If you’re spending more time structuring data than analyzing it, it’s time to rethink how DSA works for you.

Let us show you how AI categorization can save time, standardize your competitive view, and make digital shelf insights actually usable — the way they should be.

📩 Reach out to one of our digital shelf experts down and book a demo.