By Leah Logan, Vice President, Retail Media Transformation
In-store retail media - what does that even mean? There are shopper marketers and merchants who would say that they’ve been doing in-store advertising for decades. When you talk to others, it may more specifically digital advertising in-store. Given the highly subjective purview, ownership and strategy continue to be a challenge.
In Episode 6 of Retail Media Confessions, I talked with Andrew Lipsman and retail media and ecommerce strategy leader Sarp Tuncay about why in-store retail media continues to create friction inside organizations, even as retailers invest more heavily in digital experiences. The conversation quickly became less about technology and more about organizational design.
The Store Doesn't Fit Into One Box
Sarp made an observation that really stuck with me. In-store has become media, commerce, and shopper marketing all at once, yet many organizations still expect one team to own it. That's where the identity crisis begins.
Retail media teams, merchandising teams, ecommerce leaders, and shopper marketers often approach the same activation from different perspectives. None of those perspectives are wrong, but they aren't always aligned. When every team measures success differently, it becomes difficult to build programs around a common objective.
Stop Treating the Store Like Another Screen
Andrew raised another important point: we've had in-store media for decades. It just looked different.
Today's digital displays give retailers and brands far more flexibility, but simply replacing printed signs with digital creative isn't what makes the experience valuable.
The store is where shoppers make decisions.
The opportunity isn't to show more advertising. It's to provide better content, inspiration, and experiences that help shoppers make those decisions with confidence. The real litmus check will be ‘did this screen add value to the shopping experience today?'. If the answer isn’t definitively a ‘yes’, the creative most likely needs to be reevaluated.
Shared Outcomes Beat Shared Ownership
Ensuring that the screens are adding shopper value seems like an easy north star, but whoever answers that question will greatly impact the approach. Some marketers may be more focused on clearly defined measurement outputs while others are looking to create cohesion across an entire campaign. There’s no single view on the role of in-store marketing, but stakeholders should agree on the outcome they are looking for from the spend overall. This means, more time spent has to happen during planning stages.
If one team celebrates impressions, another celebrates conversions, and another focuses on incrementality, everyone can claim success while the business learns very little. Shared business outcomes create better planning, better measurement, and ultimately better experiences for shoppers.
Technology will continue to improve. Digital capabilities will continue to expand. But solving the in-store identity crisis will require organizations to align around the same goal. That's what will unlock the next stage of retail media growth.
Watch Episode 6 of Retail Media Confessions to hear the full conversation.
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Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this article and video episode are those of the speakers themselves and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organization as a whole.