Retail media

Digital retail media has given retailers and advertisers the biggest stage imaginable for reaching consumers. But that giant platform doesn’t guarantee a giant impact when it comes to influencing customers’ purchasing decisions.

As the grocery industry has quickly accelerated retail media efforts over the past few years, digital advancements took center stage in 2023 and now in-store capabilities have stepped into the spotlight throughout 2024.

Recently, retailers, advertisers and industry experts alike have noticed that, despite the numerous possibilities of digital, in-store retail media is proving more influential to consumers. 

Currently, 84% of retail sales continue to occur in-store, making the potential of in-store retail media more crucial than ever before, according to a July 2024 report from in-store advertising provider Vibenomics.

In-store retail media advancements are particularly beneficial to regional and mid-market retailers, Kevin Bridgewater, senior vice president of retail media company Quad, said in an interview, noting that these smaller retailers can better articulate their customer base to CPG partners and explain why they would benefit from messaging about a product. 

“The site traffic just isn’t enough for these smaller retailers to generate enough excitement from the brands, but the foot traffic is significant,” Bridgewater said. 

A grocer’s ability to follow a shopper’s journey throughout the store and link it to their baskets and purchases with in-store retail media capabilities is vital. Impressions, which signify if a customer saw the ad, and impact, which tracks if an ad led to a purchase, are both vital for grocers and CPGs to understand the success of an ad campaign.

Measuring impact

Every section of the grocery store can be decked out with in-store retail media, and the placement of these gadgets is strategic, aiming to garner the most impact and collect the most shopper data, experts said. 

The first retail media technology a shopper may encounter is a sampling kiosk, giving customers the opportunity for discovery right as they walk through the door. 

Kiosks most commonly live at a store’s entrance and are often interactive, Gil Phipps, senior vice president of global customer solutions at Advantage Solutions and former chief marketing officer with Sprouts Farmers Market, said in an interview. That interaction is essential to measuring the impact of ad messaging. 

Wakefern Food Corp. was one of the first to widely implement interactive kiosks back in 2023, installing them at 95 ShopRite and The Fresh Grocer stores. Powered by Freeosk, the units dispensed product samples to shoppers after they scanned in with their phone, allowing the system to collect data and see if that trial led to a purchase.  

While kiosks provide a seemingly direct method to showcase an ad partner’s campaign and gather shopper intel, their main shortcoming is their distance from the register and primary product display, Phipps noted, especially when compared to retail media messaging that is more integrated into a store’s layout.

“Messaging in the store right when you walk in is important, but not as powerful as messaging cereal on the cereal aisle, and, certainly, closer to the product and closer to the point of purchase is more powerful,” Phipps said. 

As shoppers make their way deeper into the store, they may encounter a digital end cap. Positioned at the end of an aisle, these end caps are mainly used to grab shoppers’ attention on stand-out products, like limited-time season offerings, or staple items. 

Once a consumer makes their way down the aisle, vertical banners — smaller screens attached to the aisle’s display to draw shoppers to particular goods — will grab their attention next.

These aisle-centered in-store retail media tools often use the same measurement tactics and technology. 

In April 2024, The Save Mart Companies began rolling out in-store retail media technology as part of the launch of its In-Store Connect network, which is powered by Quad. 

To measure ad performance, Quad collects transaction logs from its retail partners, including The Save Mart Companies, to measure category SKU-level performance of participating brands, Bridgewater said in an interview. 

End caps, vertical banners and other aisle screens supplied by Quad determine impressions through “shopper trap encounter technology,” Bridgewater said, a capability that senses and measures a shopper’s in-store maneuvers. The company then analyzes this transaction and SKU-level data alongside impressions. 

From there, Quad carries out A/B testing, also known as split testing, to track awareness and compares the results for stores within its network against stores in the same chain that are not part of its network, Bridgewater said. 

Grocers can also bring retail media to their refrigerated doors.  

Technology and retail media company CoolerX, formerly named Cooler Screens, is one such company that offers digital refrigerators and freezer doors. These screens showcase ads and product information as well as let shoppers interact with digital merchandising. 

Artem Lavrinovich, chief data and product officer for the company, compared the interaction to a consumer clicking on a digital ad. For its retail partners, CoolerX uses sensors on its screens to provide shopper behavior insights, including how close they were to the screen, how long they stayed in front of it and how many shoppers viewed it. This intel, as well as the store’s transaction logs, are time-stamped, allowing CoolerX to understand the correlation between a displayed ad and shoppers’ baskets. 

If a customer is standing close to the CoolerX door screen for an extended time, the company can serve them an ad aimed at influencing their purchase choices, such as highlighting a trending item behind the refrigerator door they are looking at or displaying a QR code that offers additional information or savings, Lavrinovich said. 

“The sensors are not just there to count how many ads were played and what the dwell time and the distance were. They’re actually there to recognize where the customer is in their journey,” he said. 

Smart carts are a way grocers can combine nearly all in-store retail media has to offer — push ads, personalization, in-store app features, loyalty program promotions and digital screens — into one machine. 

Though not yet as widely deployed as digital screens, smart carts are gaining popularity amongst grocers.

Instacart is an e-commerce provider that is heavily leaning into the power of smart carts, with “thousands” of its screen-equipped carts, Caper Carts, expected to be in supermarkets by the end of 2024, CEO Fidji Simo said in May. 

As in-store retail media has grown, so have Caper Cart’s capabilities. In January 2024, Instacart debuted ads on the smart cart’s screens and began piloting the new capability at Good Food Holdings banner stores. The feature enables CPG brands to engage with customers through ads during their shopping trips and serve them more personalized content based on past purchases and in-store shopping behavior, Instacart said in an emailed announcement about the technology.  

With smart carts being one of the newest types of in-store retail media, measurement capabilities are not as standard as stationary in-store screens. In emailed comments, Instacart did not elaborate on Caper Cart’s measurement capabilities.

What’s limiting in-store retail media tech? 

While grocers can unlock deeper shopper behavior insights with their newfound retail media capabilities, experts note that advancements are often halted and the technology itself has limitations.

For example, while smart carts may be the next wave of in-store retail media technology, Phipps worries that they may end up restricting shopper spending. 

Because there is a limit to the number of items that can go into a cart, Phipps is concerned that specialty features, like being able to tally up a shopper’s total prior to checkout, might not work if a shopper exceeds the cart’s capacity. 

Even more pressing for consumers, however, is the potential that grocers might breach their privacy as they look to further personalize the shopping experience. 

CoolerX, Quad and Grocery TV don’t currently capture or record personally identifiable information like gender, age and race, they said. Instead, they lean on impressions to measure an ad’s impact.

Grocery TV CEO Marlow Nickell and Head of Data and Analytics Dallas Griffin noted that the company experimented with measuring demographics on their devices about five years ago, a practice they “abandoned very quickly” after getting inaccurate results. Now, the company relies on third-party audited impressions through a partnership with Placer.ai. 

Lavrinovich noted that CoolerX’s technology acts like a radar-based system, sensing a human’s presence without gathering demographic details while Quad bases ad impact on impressions, SKU level movement and retailers’ transaction logs. 

“We have no cameras on our device. We have no intention of putting cameras on our devices. Our belief, and my belief specifically, is that crosses the line of what the customer is looking for,” Bridgewater said, noting that collecting demographic information raises privacy concerns for consumers. 

Going forward, tapping into retailers’ apps may be the key to unlocking in-store retail media. 

A retailer’s app is “the most powerful in-store media surface” combining first-party data with in-store traffic insights, said Jordan Berke, founder and CEO of Tomorrow Retail Consulting and a former Walmart e-commerce executive.  

“As consumers engage with the app while they’re in store, the potential to personalize and monetize and to give brands very targeted engagement opportunities is remarkable,” he added. 

According to Berke, the next step for in-store retail media advancement is to combine the power of apps with in-store digital screens, giving customers the most personalized shopping experience possible. This development would involve enabling in-store screens to recognize when a customer’s app is nearby and display product ads and store messages on the aisle screen that fit their specific needs. 

Getting to this point, though, would take retailers convincing their customers to trade privacy for this personalization, but it’s a trade-off Berke believes customers will be willing to accept.

“It’s not a gimme, it’s not a low-hanging fruit opportunity,” Berke said. However, the industry has seen “time and time again that if retailers can prove and continuously deliver that value, customers are comfortable with that exchange [of personal information],” he added. 

Connecting in-store screens with apps would also improve metrics — specifically incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) — for grocers’ brand and advertiser partners, Berke said.

Measuring iROAS requires precise attribution and control group creation. Currently, though, grocers’ in-store screen metrics are “lighter and looser,” leaving them unable to provide the highly detailed data advertisers seek, according to Berke. 

Quad, for example, is getting ready to roll out a capability where people can opt-in to link their retailer loyalty app to then receive personalized offers such as coupons, according to Bridgewater. 

“The fact that we are targeting people who are just in the store is so significant … [Previously] you haven’t been able to target them in an excellent environment when they’re ready to make that purchase decision — until now,” Bridgewater said.

Albertsons Media Collective announced in June 2024 the launch of Collective TV, which will provide advertisers with the ability to target and measure ad campaigns across streaming, digital video and, eventually, linear TV through a unified platform. 

Albertsons’ retail media arm is working across numerous technology partners, including Google Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk and LiveRamp, to power and monetize Collective TV. 

This latest move by Albertsons aims to address the disjointed process advertisers and brands face when running connected TV campaigns by bringing planning, execution and measurement under one tool. 

Albertsons is rapidly expanding its digital retail media capabilities while keeping standardized metrics — an initiative the grocer is spearheading — as a priority. 

The launch of Collective TV aims to give advertising partners more capabilities when launching video ads across modes of television at a lower production cost and speed to market, according to a press release. 

“With Collective TV, we’re removing the silos between publishers, demand-side platforms, and identity solutions by offering an outcome-driven TV solution that is flexible, scalable and measurable,” Kristi Argyilan, senior vice president of retail media for Albertsons Media Collective, said in a statement. 

Collective TV provides advertisers with three service channels to choose from with offerings from multiple partners including Google Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, FreeWheel, iSpot and Clinch.

The Premium Offering Channel, for example, enables brands to create omnichannel video campaigns and gives access to additional connected TV inventory through FreeWheel as well as personalized and localized dynamic content optimization through Clinch. 

The DIY CTV Channel offers advertisers “build-it-yourself” capabilities, giving brands access to The Trade Desk’s connected TV inventory, which includes Albertsons Media Collective’s first-party audience data and measurement capabilities. 

“CTV represents some of the most premium inventory for advertisers,” Ben Sylvan, vice president of data partnerships for The Trade Desk, said in a statement. “Albertsons’ purchase-based data represents an opportunity for media buyers to bring that incredibly valuable data to inform their media buys on the big screen and focus on the most valuable buyers.”

The debut of Collective TV builds on Albertsons’ growing portfolio of retail media capabilities that aim to expand advertisers’ reach to customers. 

Earlier in June 2024, the grocery company announced a partnership with Rokt to broaden its retail media network’s reach of advertising partners and ad capabilities. Brands with products and services not sold online by Albertsons are now able to engage with the grocer’s retail media network and connect with its e-commerce customers through targeted ads.

As retail media blooms in the grocery industry, advertising raises new challenges and opportunities different from selling groceries, executives from Ahold Delhaize USA’s retail media and Giant Eagle stressed during Grocery Dive and Marketing Dive’s co-hosted virtual event, “How to Navigate and Capitalize on Retail Media Networks,” in September 2024.

When it comes to retail media, Bobby Watts, senior vice president of AD Retail Media for Ahold Delhaize, follows the slogan, “It’s not a banana.” Compared to grocery sales, retail media poses different margins, expenses and costs, he said. 

As grocers embark on retail media efforts, Watts and Jonathan Mancuso, director of real media sales for Giant Eagle’s Leap Media Group, pulled back the curtain on their respective companies’ strategies.  

Building the case for in-house retail media

Both Watts and Mancuso shared the benefits of running retail media in-house. Giant Eagle launched Leap in 2023 while Ahold Delhaize announced in 2022 plans to transition its retail media business to a fully in-house operation, which is now AD Retail Media. 

“We like the approach of owning our own narrative,” Mancuso said. 

Though Giant Eagle is a regional grocer, it can make quick pivots in key verticals that make the grocer unique, Mancuso said. Leveraging trust in its workers is key, Mancuso said, adding that it’s easier to take calculated risks when investing in yourself than a third party with different fee structures.

“It’s not necessarily something where we said, ‘We’re going to launch Leap Retail Media Group.’ We said we’re going to take IT and we’re going to take our marketing team [and] our merchandising team and we’re going to come together and formulate what this looks like together. And that led to I think a much more effective and organic growth.”

Meanwhile, AD Retail Media includes executives with a mix of backgrounds, from people with decades of experience to those newer to the space but who bring merchandising and e-commerce experience, Watts said.

The diversity of AD Retail Media’s team is helping it build an “omnichannel activation” for advertisers, Watts said.

But for retail media to succeed, that team has to help the broader organization understand what it’s doing and buy in on its strategy. 

“Being a media publisher is different than selling groceries and so it takes a bit to get the organization to come along and understand that and then understand how they can apply that to their business specifically in the merchandising world,” Watts said.

Balancing in-store and online efforts

While online advertising has featured on grocers’ websites and apps for years, both Watts and Mancuso said their respective companies are in the “infancy” phase of in-store retail media. 

In-store media holds a lot of promise for retailers and has a lot of potential access points, from smart cart advertisements to digital screens to in-app messaging. But Watts said he doesn’t want to overwhelm shoppers. 

“I think sometimes as a retail media network we get a bad rap that we’re trying to turn the stores into Times Square,” Watts said.

Digital screens are “not cheap” and it’s important that they are located in prime positions to both benefit the advertisers and the customer experience, Watts said. 

Ahold Delhaize is expanding its partnership with Vibenomics and in-store audio to create a “sight and sound” approach in-store, Watts said. AD Retail Media is working to figure out how to connect retail media with the retailer’s apps, Watts said. 

AD Retail Media has capitalized on its connection to Ahold Delhaize’s global footprint and expertise. It regularly holds knowledge-sharing sessions on retail media with its European counterparts, Watts said: “We knew the U.S. was mature in some places like off-site [media], social media versus where Europe was mature in places like digital out of home or in-store.” 

Giant Eagle has a vendor partner that produces on-shelf signage, Mancuso said, noting that signage and audio are currently the retailer’s extent of in-store retail media. 

“We are ironically at the perfect time, I would argue for our business, to explore in-store [retail media],” Mancuso said, noting that the Interactive Advertising Bureau has newly created industry standards for in-store retail media, which it released in September 2024.

Meanwhile at GetGo, the convenience store chain the retailer is selling to Couche-Tard, the company has internally powered digital screens that display discounts, special offers and seasonal trends messaging, Mancuso said. 

Getting on the standardization bandwagon early

Both Mancuso and Watts stressed the importance of following retail media standards. AD Retail Media follows IAB standards “as closely as we can,” Watts said, adding that the industry might take a while to catch up on implementing standardization.

Mancuso noted that adhering to specific metrics and measurements requires investments in labor and technology infrastructures that aren’t easy to stand up overnight.

While IAB is providing standardization guidelines, Mancuso said that agencies representing advertisers are also often controlling the conversation around metrics and measurements.

“I would imagine from the perspective of the advertiser … there is a retail media network in just about every business for just about every service,” Mancuso said. 

Going forward, they see their work to establish in-house operations will help their retail media networks stand out to advertisers.

Watts said he doesn’t want to see retail as strictly a driver for return on ad spend or incremental volume.

Instead, retail media “should be rooted in: what is the business problem you’re trying to solve? Let’s lead with a data-led strategy,” and then follow up with measurements to see how campaigns are performing, Watts said. 

Sam’s Club’s retail media network announced in July 2024 the launch of display ads in its app’s Scan & Go feature, integrating physical and digital retail media capabilities.  

The display ads will appear on the cart page of the club retailer’s app. The placement for these relevant pop-up ads aims to help shoppers more easily discover products and is a new way for Sam’s Club to measure member shopping behavior and ad performance in-store. 

Sam’s Club’s latest retail media move is the latest industry example of connecting digital retail media capabilities with the in-store experience.

The Walmart-owned club retailer's retail media network, Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP), will display ads on the in-app cart page for members who opt into the service, according to the announcement. The ad then refreshes after each new product scan.

The new tool allows advertisers to connect with shoppers at the “point of conversion” and provides members with a more convenient shopping and product discovery experience, the press release noted. 

“This new capability reflects our member obsession and commitment to ensuring ads reach the right members at the right time in their shopping journeys,” Diana Marshall, Sam’s Club’s executive vice president and chief growth officer, said in a statement. 

The Scan & Go ad feature will also give Sam’s Club new insights into shopper behavior as well as the effectiveness of ads it pushes out. The ads will provide measurable results to the retailer’s ad and CPG partners, tracking metrics like return on ad spend, click-through rate, incremental sales and conversion rate, according to the press release. 

The new Scan & Go display ads are currently available in all clubs for select members, and Sam’s Club plans to roll it out to all of its in-club shoppers over the next few weeks.

While scan-and-go app features have had a touch-and-go relationship with other grocers, the payment method has been a success in Sam’s Club stores. In March 2024, the retailer shared that it has seen a 50% uptick in Scan & Go adoption over the past three years.

Expanding in-store retail media has been a defining advancement throughout the first half of 2024 as grocers push to bring digital personalization into store aisles. 

Aisle screens, digital kiosks and end-cap displays have grown in popularity over the past six months and, like Sam’s Club’s new Scan & Go ads, they aim to promote product discovery while consumers are actively shopping and serve up new ad placements. Industry experts are also pushing for grocers to continue finding avenues for syncing in-store retail media with app features.

Earlier in 2024, Save A Lot expanded its partnership with Swiftly, allowing its technology partner to update its website and power its first-ever mobile app. The app will give Save A Lot customers the ability to clip and redeem coupons and offers from their phones.

In September 2023, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released the initial draft of its “Retail Media Measurement Guidelines” for public comment. Now, a year later, Kroger is readying its release of an updated measurement model influenced by IAB’s standards. 

The updated measurement model, set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2024, will use first-party customer data to help brands understand how their media budgets “are working for them,” Christine Foster, Kroger Precision Marketing’s vice president of product strategy and media operations, said during a panel at IAB’s Connected Commerce Summit in September 2024. 

“[It’s] a hybrid approach that will continue to deconstruct sales and layer in exposure data so that brands can really get a better picture of their full-funnel impact,” Foster said.

Foster noted that Kroger had a head start on its measurement efforts as its data science team had been working on standardizing metrics six years prior to the IAB’s draft guidelines released September 2023. However, she noted that the draft standards from IAB strengthened the basis of Kroger Precision Marketing’s data privacy, transparency and accuracy — key elements of its updated measurement model. 

Foster credits IAB’s standards for helping its retail media operations strengthen accountability to brands and consumers while driving more relevant experiences with audiences. The standards also provided guidelines for approaching incrementality, warning against using incrementality as a “blanket statement” and emphasizing the importance of retail media networks having a specific methodology for gathering incremental data.

“What is a brand looking to drive incrementality around? Is it units? Is it households? Is it dollars? These are really complex things to break down,” she said. 

Despite retail media’s rapid growth in recent years, nailing down standardized measurement metrics is a “slow journey everyone’s taking,” Foster said, adding that it can be challenging for retail media networks to avoid getting stuck on strategies in a time when the space is constantly evolving. 

“The biggest kind of threat to all digital advertising is the status quo,” Foster said. “And so I think it’s our responsibility… to lean into standardization in a way that does lean into the transparency and the openness to sharing more with the brands that you are working with.”

Commerce video is growing into an impactful and entertaining way for retailers to connect with shoppers and influence purchases.

Retailers are tapping commerce video more than ever, with 70% of digital video advertisers using it. As the fastest-growing advertising channel, it is projected to increase to $63 billion in 2024, almost 80% faster than the total media market, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s “Unconnected Commerce” report released in September 2024 during its Connected Commerce Summit in New York. 

But in an interview, Chris Bruderle, IAB’s vice president of industry insights and content strategy, noted that there is a risk of commerce video turning customers away if it is not effectively produced and run.

While shoppable videos and connected TV (CTV) are the most common versions of commerce video that grocery retailers use, commerce videos have a “clear call-to-action,” such as “sign up,” “learn more” and “shop now,” that aim to make viewers purchase a product, according to IAB. 

The benefits of a successful shoppable video ad or CTV video can be exponential, but IAB reports that “advertisers are overconfident in the effectiveness of their commerce video strategies.”

Around 70% of consumers reported feeling annoyed or negative toward commerce video ads on a monthly basis, and one-third felt that way at least weekly, according to the report. And this annoyance from consumers is no small matter.

Two-thirds of consumers who are annoyed by commerce video ads “take actions that harm brand metrics, such as switching to competitors, complaining on social media, or unsubscribing from services or newsletter,” the report said, meaning that retailers need to have a clear understanding of how to best connect with their customers through their phones and televisions. 

“Brands like to go to market using digital video in a specific way, and they have their tried and true media plans and marketing strategies that work,” Bruderle said. “But at the same time, consumers have preferences regarding how they want to be messaged and engaged, particularly with digital video — and do those things match up?” 

According to Bruderle, there are five key considerations that grocers and advertisers should take into account to ensure ads are enjoyable: 

• Make sure the video is at the “top of the funnel” and takes shoppers through the full “purchase journey.”
• Don’t assume push ads can only appear when viewers are in “shopping mode,” such as actively putting items in an online basket or are near a store. Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels can encourage them to make purchases 24/7. 
• Consumers actually prefer longer ads with more information like QR codes, store locations and store website links.
• Be careful when balancing frequency and repetitiveness, as being overly repetitive is a top annoyance for consumers and leads to frustration. Retailers should test and learn what their customers’ preferences are. 
• Social media influencer and content creator partnerships are valuable, but only 40% of companies creating commerce videos on social media are currently leveraging them. 

During IAB’s Connected Commerce Summit, TikTok executive Adolfo Fernandez said 61% of people who engage with TikTok shop on the app as well, and, moving forward, the social media platform aims to create a seamless path for purchasing. 

Fernandez, a global director at the company who oversees product strategy and operations, also stressed how retailers can better tap content creators who can create their own “bundles” or products they like that retailers can then use.  

Consumer perception of content isn’t the only area grocers need to focus on when building out commerce video initiatives. 

Since Albertsons Media Collective announced building out its CTV strategy in June 2024, Evan Hovorka, the company’s vice president of product and innovation, said in an interview he has noticed friction between agencies and retailers, noting that communication about media budgets between clients, agencies and Albertsons’ own team could be better. 

“CTV is just another version of linear TV, [but] it does open the door for more data-driven targeting and measurement and creating. And so if retail media is going to find a way to provide value in that very agency-friendly world, we have to show up with the assets that CPGs care about,” Hovorka said.

Northeast Grocery Inc. (NGI) is launching an omnichannel retail media network in partnership with Inmar Intelligence, according to a July 2024 announcement. 

The network, called Northeast Grocery Shopper Link, will provide off- and onsite media across NGI’s nearly 300-store footprint. 

Partnerships with third-party technology companies are becoming essential for regional grocers in the retail media industry as they offer streamlined platforms, more CPG insights and simpler ways to connect with shoppers.

The parent company of Price Chopper/Market 32 and Tops Friendly Markets is launching a digitally focused retail media network by expanding its decade-long partnership with Inmar. 

Northeast Grocery Shopper Link will provide the grocer’s advertising partners with “comprehensive and automatic cross-channel reporting and real-time campaign performance,” according to the press release, as well as increased scale and customization tools for advertising and media activations.  

The network will tap into Inmar’s Managed Service and Self-Service buying models, which include a tool that allows advertisers to launch offsite media campaigns and simplifies the campaign-building process by using an interface that pulls from offer details and auto-generates campaign creative. These campaigns will drive awareness of digital coupons, per the announcement. 

As the partnership expands NGI’s digital media presence, advertisers will be able to customize campaigns across each of the grocery company’s retail banners.

Throughout its partnership with NGI, Inmar helped the grocery company launch numerous digital coupons and media offerings, like Tops Shopper Link in 2021. 

In June 2023, Northeast Grocery expanded its partnership with Instacart to include new retail media features, including sponsored search, banner ads and more personalized recommendations to online shoppers.

Inmar’s work with NGI is not the technology company’s first time partnering with a grocer to assist in the launch of a retail media platform. In March 2024, Wakefern Food Corp. announced the debut of its retail media network Wakefern Media Exchange, powered by Inmar.