A new report from In-Store Marketplace and Catalyst Media Consulting investigates why in-store digital media investment remains stagnant despite rapid technological growth and the massive reach of physical retail. While the industry often blames a lack of digital-style measurement, the research suggests the real issue is a fundamental misalignment of goals.
In-store digital media refers to the network of digital screens and audio systems within a physical retail environment used to engage shoppers at the point of purchase. Unlike traditional static signage such as printed posters or shelf talkers, digital media allows retailers and brands to deliver dynamic, real-time content that can be updated instantly based on data, time of day or inventory levels.
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The retail and CPG industry has attempted to force in-store media to follow a digitally native, one-to-one attribution playbook. This approach has failed for two primary reasons. First, there’s a lack of sophisticated sensors. A “measurement alignment gap” exists where different stakeholders use conflicting scorecards to define success. The second problem is treating a physical store like a website creates a complex system that fails to tell a compelling story to those holding the budgets.
So, to unlock incremental CPG budgets, retail media networks, or RMNs, must stop trying to mimic digital media and instead align with how brands already evaluate in-store success, and that’s via “Product Movement.” Authors of the report said success should be measured by how media influences the physical flow of goods, rather than trying to force-fit digital metrics such as click-through rates or individual tracking into a physical environment.
Paul Brenner, senior vice president of global retail media and partnerships at In-Store Marketplace, told Sourcing Journal that the impetus behind developing this research was to come up with a better measurement of success. “We went into this research expecting to validate that better measurement would unlock more in-store media investment,” he said. “What we found instead was more fundamental: The real barrier isn’t a lack of measurement, but a lack of alignment.”
Brenner said the industry is investing heavily in in-store technology, but retail budgets aren’t scaling alongside it “because brands, merchants, agencies and retail media networks are all operating under different scorecards.” He said right now, success “depends entirely on who you ask. That disconnect is what prompted us to define a more unified, practical approach.”
A lack of unification was bound to happen as the technology has rapidly grown over the past several years, and it continues to evolve. Brenner said in-store media evolved from a merchant-led focus on product movement “to a more complex ecosystem spanning media, marketing and retail media teams.”
The in-store digital media market is undergoing a rapid transformation, with the global digital signage infrastructure projected to reach about $34 billion by 2026, according to analysts. This growth is increasingly fueled by the “third wave” of advertising, RMNs, as physical stores evolve into high-margin digital platforms capable of generating more than $200 billion in total ad revenue.
By leveraging 4K displays, interactive kiosks and AI-driven attribution, retailers and brands are capturing what analysts call “intent-heavy shoppers” at the point of purchase, which offers brands a data-rich alternative to traditional online tracking.
This shift represents a fundamental reimagining of the brick-and-mortar environment, where real-time digital inventory and more deterministic sales data are turning physical aisles into the most measurable and profitable segment with the omnichannel sales funnel.
Brenner said the evolution of the in-store digital media market introduced fragmentation. “The industry also chased digital-style attribution as a path to scale, often overcomplicating how success is measured in a physical environment,” he said.
Brenner, one of the authors of the report, said what’s driving success now isn’t more technology or more precise attribution, but organizational alignment. “The retailers seeing the most success are bringing merchandising and retail media together under a shared strategy, anchored in what has always mattered in-store: sales and units,” he said.
The unified metric the authors of the report created is called the Shopper Purchase Rate. Brenner described the SPR as a unifying measurement framework “that grounds in-store media in product movement while adding a shopper lens.”
“Instead of asking ‘Did this work?’ like traditional ROAS, SPR answers ‘Who did this work for, and what did they actually buy?’” Brenner said, noting that it combines dollars, units and shopper behavior across segments using methodologies brands already trust, “like matched-market and pre/post analysis.”
“More importantly, [SPR] creates a common language across merchants, media teams and brands, making it easier to align on what success looks like and move from test budgets to scaled, repeatable investment,” he said.
