f you're a CPG brand weighing rebate programs, the shortlist usually starts with two apps: Ibotta and Fetch. Both work. Both have millions of users. And both are built on the same assumption — that the way to reward a shopper is to get her into an app first. The best alternative doesn't ask her to do that at all.
Because the app was never the value. The verified purchase was. Once you see that, the comparison changes.
Ibotta is a cash-back app. A brand funds an offer, the shopper buys the qualifying product, scans her receipt, and gets a few dollars back. Fetch is broader and more gamified — you scan any receipt, earn points, and redeem them for gift cards, which means people scan everything they buy regardless of brand. Different mechanics, same starting point: a shopper who already opened an app to hunt for value.
That's the tell. Ibotta's own pitch is cash back "on purchases you make anyway," and its heaviest users skew toward committed, budget-focused deal seekers (Retail Dive). Fetch's model runs on people scanning receipts they'd have generated anyway. These are fine tools for reaching deal-conscious shoppers. They are not tools for reaching someone who's never heard of you, because that person isn't in the app.
Nobody wakes up and opens a rebate app to find a new brand. They open Instagram Reels and TikTok. That's where a shopper gets inspired, where a creator she trusts holds up your product, and where, for about four seconds, she wants it. The right rebate catches her in that moment — in the feed, before she was looking for a discount at all.
That's also where the incremental customers are. In Crafted's pilot with Just Ice Tea, meeting shoppers on creator content instead of waiting for them in an app brought in more than 2,000 verified new-to-brand shoppers in five weeks. Not deal hunters. New customers.
The alternative is simple. There's no app to download and no account to create. A shopper claims the rebate by text or a quick web form, uploads a photo of her receipt, and she's done — all inside the same window of attention that got her to consider the product. In the Just Ice Tea pilot, that no-app flow turned 44% of paid media clicks into an email opt-in and 20% of those into a fully verified receipt.
And yes, uploading a receipt is a small ask. That's the feature, not the bug. A deal hunter will do it for two dollars off anything. A shopper who found you through a creator and still bothers to prove she bought you is exactly the customer you want in your database. You're not removing every ounce of effort — you're removing the effort in the wrong place, an app download before she's even bought, and keeping the effort that filters for people who care.
This is where the apps and the alternative really split. On Ibotta or Fetch, the shopper who redeems your offer is the platform's member who happened to buy your product. The platform keeps the profile, and usually the next impression too. You're renting space inside someone else's walled garden.
When a shopper claims a Crafted rebate, the record is yours — an email and a phone number for a verified buyer you could not have reached any other way. That's the start of an owned list you can actually use. Tell your Target shoppers the day you land in Kroger. Send them the next offer, invite them into a community, survey them, or just talk to them. The receipt even tells you where they bought, which is its own gift when you're across the table from a retail buyer.
The economics compound from there. The first rebate is what it costs you to acquire her. Every purchase after that is nearly free to drive, because you own the line straight to her. Inside an app, you pay to reach the same person again and again. And with third-party cookies gone for CPG (eMarketer), a first-party list of verified buyers isn't a nice-to-have anymore — it's the only shopper data you'll ever actually own.
The app was never the value. Neither was the rebate. The relationship was — and for the first time, a brand that only sells at retail gets to keep it.
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