A joint study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Grocery TV found that 43 percent of marketers admit they are not fully using in-store retail media, even as all respondents recognized its potential across the full marketing funnel, according to Supermarket News. The gap is not knowledge. The gap is allocation.
The study surveyed brand marketers and agency buyers who already understand the format. In-store screens, endcap displays, cart media, and audio reach shoppers when purchase intent is highest. Yet nearly half deploy budget elsewhere—into digital channels with longer attribution windows and hazier conversion paths. The underinvestment stems from measurement friction and procurement inertia, not performance doubt.
The mechanism that makes in-store retail media work is proximity to transaction. A shopper sees a message for Greek yogurt on a cooler door, turns left, and buys. Attribution is clean. The format compresses awareness and conversion into seconds. Unlike social or search, where a customer may see an ad Monday and convert Thursday, in-store media collapses the funnel. The study confirmed that marketers see this value across brand-building and performance goals, but budget shifts lag insight.
For physical product brands, this is an opening. While larger CPG companies debate measurement standards and wait for unified dashboards, smaller brands can move into underpriced inventory. Grocery TV and similar networks sell screen time in 15-second loops on a CPM or flat-rate basis. A regional brand can buy a four-week run in 50 stores for five figures, targeting specific zip codes where its distribution is strongest. The execution is straightforward: a static product shot, a single benefit line, and a price or promo if running one. No video production team required.
Start with store networks that match your current retail footprint. If you distribute through independent grocers in the Midwest, approach Grocery TV or Cooler Screens and request a rate card for those locations. Negotiate a test flight: four weeks, half your budget, 10 to 20 stores. Creative should be a high-resolution product image, brand logo, and one sentence. Example: "Organic peanut butter, now in aisle 7." or "New flavor. Grab it cold." Run the flight, track syndicated sales data or retailer dashboard movement for those doors during the period, then scale or kill.
The miss for most brands is waiting for perfect attribution before testing. In-store media is the closest physical-product marketing gets to performance creative. If a shopper is in the store, seeing your product on a screen 10 feet from the shelf, and sales do not move, the problem is not the channel. It is the product, the price, or the placement. The 43 percent gap the IAB study reveals is budget waiting to move. Smaller brands that act now lock in lower rates before enterprise CPG catches up and bids up the inventory.
In-store retail media is underpriced because enterprise brands underspend; test with a four-week flight and clean sales data.
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