Retail media, explained for people who run stores and screens

A plain-English resource on how retail media networks work — with a focus on the part most guides skip: the physical, in-store screen layer.

Retail media has become one of the fastest-growing categories in advertising because it sits on top of something retailers already own: their customers' attention and their first-party purchase data. Most coverage focuses on the on-site, e-commerce side — sponsored products on a retailer's website or app. This resource looks at the other half: in-store retail media, where the inventory is shelf-edge displays, endcap screens, and large-format digital signage inside the physical store.

The pages here are written to be useful whether you are a retailer weighing a media network of your own, a brand buying into one, or an operator trying to make in-store screens pay for themselves.

Start here

A note kept free of sponsors

There is no single right stack for in-store retail media. The ad-sales model, the measurement approach, and the screen-management software are three separate decisions, and conflating them is where most early programs go wrong. We try to keep them separate throughout.