For decades, the grocery aisle was a static environment where cardboard displays and price tags did the heavy lifting. Now, the physical retail environment is undergoing a digital overhaul designed to rival the programmatic capabilities of the open web – turning brick-and-mortar locations into networked media channels.
By integrating sensor technology and centralized content management, retailers aim to close the gap between digital ad exposure and physical product selection.
“We shouldn’t have in-store be this kind of standalone that we just have to set it and forget it and hope it works,” said Liz Roche, VP, media and measurement, Albertsons Media Collective, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “We should be able to get those real-time signals… so we can adjust media on the fly.”
The End of ‘Dumb Screens’
The push to digitize the aisle comes as the sector explodes, with retail media projected to be the fastest-growing advertising channel through 2027, according to forecasts by Emarketer. To capitalize on this growth, Albertsons recently announced the launch of its in-store digital display network in partnership with STRATACACHE, a move designed to integrate digital screens throughout its locations for better shopper engagement, according to company announcements.
“I’d say the biggest shift that Albertsons is making to modernize in-store retail media is definitely the idea of networking,” Roche said. “Bringing together a really integrated solution that can scale across stores, but also be so precise as to really curate that shopper journey throughout the store.”
This approach marks a significant departure from legacy hardware implementations that lacked connectivity. “For a long time, screens in stores were dumb screens,” Roche said. “They just were, you know, thumb drives in the back of screens across stores, and they weren’t necessarily orchestrated.”
Closing the feedback loop
While online environments offer granular tracking, the physical store has historically been a “black box” regarding ad attribution. To address this, the company recently introduced an API to help advertisers integrate campaign performance data directly into their own measurement models, Albertsons Media Collective stated.
Roche said that proving efficacy goes beyond gut feelings about high traffic. “We just launched our match market incrementality methodology for in-store, which is really, really important because we want to show brands that, hey, this is driving shopper behavior in a different direction,” Roche said. “We’re able to influence shopper behavior and we’re able to drive those incremental sales.”
The ultimate objective is to establish direct attribution akin to digital standards. “That’s getting closer to direct attribution,” Roche said. “Bringing those signals to life so we can use attribution almost as an efficiency metric… that the right folks are seeing the right, the right content, but also pairing that with our lift methodology to ensure that ads are in fact effective.”
The original full funnel
Marketing theory often separates brand awareness from performance, but the physical grocery environment seems to collapse these stages into one. With the introduction of Collective TV, which combines retail media with television advertising, the retailer is attempting to bridge the gap between off-site brand building and on-site conversion.
“It’s not new news that the funnel is collapsing,” Roche said. “But in the store, it really takes on a different kind of meaning because the store is a full-funnel experience. In fact, I would argue it’s the original full-funnel experience. You know, when you walk into the store, you can very easily be influenced, and you can very easily have that awareness and start discovering new brands.”
Looking ahead, the strategy involves layering sophisticated digital tactics onto the physical aisle. “How do we really curate shopper journeys? How do we orchestrate across screens?” Roche asked. “Maybe that’s through some day parting, maybe that’s through sequential messaging, maybe that’s through integrated audio, but all of these things can really come together to create that really immersive experience for our shoppers.”
You’re watching “Scaling In-Store, Demystified: How Retail Media Is Reinventing the Aisle,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Stratacache. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
