The urgency is real. For retailers, brands and marketers to unlock investment in brick-and-mortar retail media channels, they need a common set of standards to assess the impact of in-store digital ads, and they need it fast.
Why the rush? Industry research shows 70% of buyers cite lack of standards as a barrier to investment, while 62% point to measurement standards as their top challenge. With in-store retail media spend projected to top $1 billion by 2028, retailers can’t afford to wait to establish meaningful metrics—and they’re not waiting. They’re learning by doing.
That was a key takeaway from the NRF’s What’s In Store for Retail Media Networks event on January 11th in New York. During two panels—one about in-store measurement, moderated by the IAB’s Collin Colburn, and another about scaling in-store digital media, moderated by industry expert Colin Lewis—top executives from major retailers like Albertsons, CVS and Iceland pulled back the curtain about how they’re already deploying the IAB’s new framework for maturing in-store measurement.
The IAB framework centers on three P’s for measuring the impact of in-store digital ads on sales: Play (the ad actually delivered), Presence (someone had the opportunity to see it), and Pairing (play and presence happened in time-aligned fashion). Missing from the list? Perfection.
“Brands want precision,” Collin Colburn acknowledged during the measurement session. “But waiting for fully resolved standards around presence, exposure and attribution is going to delay the ability to plan and buy in-store media. So our conclusion with this framework was that measurement has to be viable before it can be perfect.”
Albertsons: Co-Creating in Real Time
Liz Roche, VP of Media and Measurement for Albertsons Media Collective, told the measurement panel audience that their in-store measurement is a work in progress, and mutual discovery with brands is their modus operandi. Brands don’t adopt Albertsons’ measurement methodology—they help build it.
“Our brand partners need to come on this journey with us as we figure these things out,” Liz shared. “We all are going to enter with some hypotheses, and some are going to be right and some are going to be wrong. As an industry, we need to be brave enough to say, ‘Let’s give it a whirl and not be afraid to be wrong.’”
This collaborative strategy is already yielding impressive results. Working with Mondelēz International to promote Sargento Cheese Bakes across 116 stores, Albertsons compared sales in test stores against carefully matched control stores using nearly 60 variables to reduce bias. The results: 14% sales lift, $2.41 matched market ROAS, and 5.5 million impressions.
Now Albertsons is expanding its in-store measurement infrastructure to 800 more stores and inviting brand partners to experiment with them to determine the metrics that matter most. It’s an invitation that their partners are welcoming. “It’s wet clay, and brands are leaning in to learn with us,” Liz told the NRF audience.
CVS: Structured Learning Through Pilots
According to Kristen DiCorleto, Head of Marketing at CVS Media Exchange (CMX), “Everything we do always starts with a pilot.” CVS tests, learns, builds best practices, then partners with brands with a testing structure in place.
“In working with our brands, we make sure that they understand how we’re setting up the framework, what goes into the methodology, making sure that we’re all comfortable with the test set up,” she explained during the scaling panel.
CVS was among the first major retailers to partner with IAB on measurement standardization, rolling out metrics on incremental sales lift, ROAS, and attributable sales tied to in-store activations. From their earliest pilots, they learned that different screens require completely different creative strategies, not just resized assets. And they’ve discovered that measurement is about constantly evaluating: positioning, technology, content, and even content loop timing (5 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds).
Those insights have allowed CVS to put a framework for testing in place. “Early on, I think we let our brand partners have a lot more creative liberties of what they did across all channels,” Kristen says. The solution? CVS created a creative best practices guide explaining the “why” behind recommendations—codifying their learning into adoptable frameworks.
One brand that found structured testing pays off is Dove, who launched an omnichannel campaign within CVS’s framework that delivered over $12 ROAS and roughly 5% sales lift.
CVS’s in-store measurement framework is still evolving through experimentation, Sarah Reynolds, Senior Director of Retail Experience Strategy at CMX, told attendees at the scaling panel. “For us, it’s about constantly being curious and having a mindset of constant learning,” she explained at NRF.
Iceland: Embracing Radical Simplicity
U.K. frozen food giant Iceland Foods is tackling measurement of in-store brand advertising with a two-pronged approach, according to Head of Retail Media Adam Smith: “Simple to buy, detail on demand.”
It’s all about finding what works within Iceland’s own stores, not measuring success against industry benchmarks, he told attendees of the measurement panel. “We’re moving to a place where we understand by screen, by shop, by ad, how many people have actually dwelled and as far as we can understand actually looked at this thing,” Adam explained.
The methodology is simplicity-first, focusing on one thing at a time and making the signal clear. Case in point: Iceland recently ran a controlled trial on digital ads for French’s American mustard—deliberately ensuring no promotional activity ran simultaneously. The trial’s success using Walkbase technology earned immediate scaling.
Adam admits their measurement approach is evolving, while recognizing the strides they’re already made. “It’s never going to be perfect,” he notes, “but when you consider it’s pretty much guesswork from where we were to where we are now is amazing.”
Iceland asks brands to recognize that imperfect precision beats sophisticated guesswork. As Ben Reynolds, Vice President of Business Development at Walkbase, noted during the measurement panel: “Not every campaign is going to have an 81.1% conversion rate, but you know what? We learned and the next one may have an even higher one.”
It was a theme that came up repeatedly throughout both panels and across the entire NRF event: Perfect can’t be the enemy of good. The IAB’s “three Ps” framework provides a foundation, but how retailers apply it will depend on how they work best with brand partners.
As Liz observed, perfect “is going to be an ongoing pin that keeps moving.” The retailers on the cutting edge of in-store measurement and scaling aren’t waiting for it to stop as they race ahead of their competitors in in-store media activation.
You can watch all of the sessions from What’s in Store for Retail Media Networks at STRATACACHE.com.
