Commerce Connections: In-store commerce must earn attention, investment and trust

At Commerce Connections at ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ in New York City on October 7, leaders from IAB, Dollar General, Hy-Vee and Simon Property Group agreed that in-store media will only scale when it is useful to shoppers and accountable to advertisers.

In-store commerce is growing quickly, but the panel at Commerce Connections kept returning to a simple test: does the media improve the shopping experience, and can it prove its value? Ollie Shayer, SMG’s Senior Director of Global Strategy and Innovation, framed the debate around scale, orchestration and measurement. His closing thought captured the challenge ahead: “The next generation of in-store commerce leaders will be companies that connect.”

For Collin Colburn, Vice President of Commerce and Retail Media at IAB, connection begins with evidence. In new IAB and SMG research, launched during the event, 46% of advertisers’ open-ended responses on what would encourage greater in-store investment referenced incremental sales impact, ROI or effects on store sales. “Measurement is going to be table stakes in two years,” he said. Networks need to show what the media changed, not simply how many people it reached.

Colburn’s own definition helped join the themes. He described in-store media as “the intersection between merchandising, the shopper experience and media that helps both of those things.” That makes it a shared operating issue, rather than a standalone channel.

Dollar General has been building the operational muscle behind that answer. Austin Leonard, Vice President and General Manager of DG Media Network, described how the retailer has expanded its in-store radio network to nearly 12,000 stores and uses real-time signals, including time of day, category and product availability, to adjust creative. That is a useful reminder that scale is not a tally of screens or impressions. It is the ability to make an offer relevant at store level and to show the outcome. “We have to earn them,” Leonard said of media budgets.

That same standard applies to the shopper. Britt Polihronis, Chief Operating Officer at RedMedia, Hy-Vee’s retail media network, warned against treating the store as a collection of media placements. “If I don’t have an experience that makes you want to shop, then I’ve lost you,” she said. In practice, that means media, merchandising and store operations have to work together, with the shopper deciding whether a message adds something or gets in the way.

Chip Harding, Executive Vice President at Simon Media and Experiences, made the point from a destination setting, where every format must support discovery and the visit itself. He said Simon evaluates new formats by whether they complement the journey, stay neutral or create a negative experience. The same logic should shape measurement, too: “The measurement has to match the objective.”

The panel did not present a single formula for in-store leadership. It did, however, establish a clear direction. The networks that earn more attention and investment will be those that bring the shopper experience, store operations and measurement together.