Retail media continues to expand at pace, but one channel remains stubbornly and significantly underutilized: the physical store. At SMG, we believe this is the next major growth lever. The store is the site of over 80% of transactions, and also where shoppers make most of their brand choices, where attention is at its highest, and where retail media can close the loop between awareness and conversion.
The recent In-Store Retail Media Playbook for Brands released by our friends over at Grocery TV during the IAB Connected Commerce Summit reinforces what we already see across retail media networks in Europe, APAC, and beyond. The opportunity is vast, but brands and retailers are not moving quickly enough to capture it.
The store is king
Decisions are made here. As P&G’s Jon Moeller put it: “I generally believe the majority of brand choice is made in a retail environment.”. At SMG we see this daily across the retailers we work with — the shelf is still where intent leads to action, no matter how strong digital influence might be upstream.
The reach is comparable to mass media. Physical stores can deliver audiences on par with top broadcasters, often exceeding 50 to 100 million shoppers per month, including those valuable, younger, harder-to-reach broadcast audiences.
It drives performance. Grocery TV’s analysis shows sales lifts averaging 14%. Data from SMG confirms that in-store delivers double-digit gains when integrated into a media mix.
Perfection is the enemy of progress
In North America, retailers have a tendency to approach in-store as if it were an existing retail media channel, trying to align digital media best practices with a physical retail environment.
For retailers, this comes with challenges: in-store screen and audio networks are expanding fast and will rightly play a huge role in retail media’s future. But these technologies do not represent the full picture and can be accompanied by significant CapEx demands.
Brands face a different challenge; marketing budgets are siloed and directed towards traditional media. In-store often sits outside the remit of CMOs, or agency partners. The result is underinvestment, despite its ability to outperform channels where spend is already saturated. Jay Friedman from Goodway Group has it right: “Brands need to stop focusing on media cost and focus on value and hold their agencies to that!”.
Taking the leap
Some of the most effective in-store touchpoints are not digital at all. Shelf talkers, floor clings, and displays shift behavior today without a single screen. These analog formats don’t require costly infrastructure upgrades, and they deliver proven impact on shopper behavior today.
It’s a mistake to see in-store as “unfinished” until there’s a lit-up screen in every aisle. The opportunity is already here, and those retailers that act early stand to win in the crowded commerce media landscape. Physical environments are media environments. Every aisle, every checkout, every display is a chance to connect brand building with sales impact. And when done right, it enhances on-site and off-site digital strategies, creating connected experiences for shoppers.
Brands need to stop waiting and jump in. In-store media is supply-constrained. Those who act now will lock in competitive advantages that late entrants cannot easily recover. When brands treat in-store as part of the media plan — not a separate shopper exercise or an afterthought — the results compound.
At SMG we’ve seen the power of in-store
It’s not just an addition to retail media plans, it is the missing link. We’ve seen time and time again that in-store retail media can deliver lifts in both brand awareness and sales, along with reaching new audiences in a way once reserved for TV. Data from SMG’s Plan-Apps, the Operating System for Commerce Media, shows in-store media offers, on average, a ROI of $2.63 USD when activated as part of a media mix.
The winners in retail media will be those who recognize this and embed in-store as a core growth driver that complements, if not accelerates, existing digital on-site and off-site retail media campaigns.
