Marrying digital and in-store retail media measurement with the IAB’s Collin Colburn

As part of our six-part video interview series with Beet.TV, Putting the Store at the Core of the Commerce Media Ecosystem, SMG is spotlighting the leaders driving innovation. In this edition, we hear from Collin Colburn, Vice President of Commerce & Retail Media at the IAB, who is leading efforts to standardize measurement and make retail media more accessible, accountable, and effective across the industry.

From the role of first-party data to the challenge of incrementality, Collburn shares why alignment and clarity are critical for unlocking the full potential of in-store and omnichannel retail media.

Why Standardization Matters

For Colburn, the foundation of progress in retail media comes down to speaking the same language.

“We’ve done a lot of work on standardizing measurement in the store and online in digital formats,” he says. “What that really means is making sure that the industry is speaking the same language … and making these standards translatable and consumable to the average person in the retail world.”

This includes everything from impressions and viewability in-store to how formats are defined across environments, ensuring consistency and clarity across stakeholders.

Making Standards Accessible Beyond Digital Experts

Retail media brings together a wide ecosystem of players: merchants, shopper marketing teams, trade and sales leads, digital specialists, and more. Not all are digital professionals by background.

That’s why Colburn emphasizes the need for simplicity. “We have to make these standards … bite-sizable, if you will, to those masses of folks in the retailer–brand relationship,” he explains.

First-Party Data in a Post-Cookie World

With third-party cookies on the way out, Colburn sees retail media’s strength in its privacy-safe, opted-in first-party data.

“Retailers have loyalty IDs and information about the customer that transcends both digital and physical,” he notes. Clean rooms and collaborative environments further enhance how brands can track performance while protecting consumer privacy.

Balancing Measurement with the In-Store Experience

Connecting digital campaigns to real-world store results isn’t simple, but it is essential.

“The store is an experience in and of itself,” Colburn says. That means brands and retailers need to balance monetization with customer experience. Perfection isn’t the immediate goal: “Somewhere in the middle is actually just where we need to get to in the next year or two.”

Building the Measurement Puzzle

Geolocation, transaction matchback, and viewability all play a role in proving the value of in-store media.

“Geolocation can definitely help us understand exposure in the store,” Colburn explains. “The matchback is kind of where a lot of the magic is made, because we can then be able to show what impact a campaign in the store had on sales.”

Standards around what counts as a viewable impression—whether digital screens or audio in-store—are also critical puzzle pieces for building a robust measurement framework.

Rethinking Incrementality

Perhaps the most discussed metric in retail media is incrementality. For Colburn, the key is to use it in a channel-agnostic way.

“Incrementality helps you understand whether the media had impact, not what media is getting the credit,” he says. Unlike ROAS, which measures efficiency, or attribution, which assigns credit, incrementality reveals the overall outcome of media investment.

Applying incrementality in-store, however, poses unique challenges, especially when it comes to exposure and holdout testing. Colburn sees this as a longer-term opportunity to define and refine.

Moving Forward

From standardization to first-party data to incrementality, Colburn’s message is clear: the future of retail media depends on alignment and collaboration.

By speaking the same language and embracing a shared measurement framework, brands, retailers, and partners can unlock the true value of in-store and omnichannel media—and make retail media a more integral part of the broader advertising ecosystem.