In-store retail media turns the store into a media channel. Screens, end caps, pallets, floor stickers and flyers are sold to brands as advertising inventory, and they reach shoppers when they are ready to buy, a few metres from the product.
Its historical weakness was measurement. Offline KPIs such as traffic, POS sales and brand awareness surveys are not entirely accurate, because sales can also be driven by factors such as pricing (measuring offline campaigns). Shoppermotion measures in-store media with the same language as digital: an impression is a shopper passing within range, a view is a shopper slowing below 45 cm/s in front of the placement, and a click is a shopper who then walks into the promoted category or bay.
Because every path is matched with its ticket, in-store media also gets closed-loop attribution: exposed versus non-exposed conversion, incremental sales and ROAS per placement, store and creative. Audiences can be built from in-store behaviour, such as shopping missions or missed opportunities, and activated on screens by daypart.
The end of third-party cookies made retailers' first-party data more valuable, and retail media networks are expanding to in-store assets such as screens and end-aisles. See the Retail Media overview for how the pieces fit together.