5 ways that retail media advertising connects with shoppers

Most people go to stores with a purpose in mind – a gallon of milk, a pair of shoes, a box of envelopes. Yet often their decisions about what to purchase come down to an ever-so-brief moment in the store.

That’s what makes the advent of new in-store retail media networks (RMNs) so intriguing: They give advertisers a perfectly timed opportunity to influence the makeup of a consumer’s shopping cart before it reaches the register.

For this purpose, endemic ads, which promote products that are immediately available for purchase, pay the largest dividends for retail media networks such as In-Store Connect by Quad, a networked system of digital displays.

Endemic ads deliver at the moment of truth and broadly enhance the shopping experience by delivering on what the consumer wants or needs. A signal of how effective they truly are: RMNs are increasingly drawing interest from “non-endemic” advertisers – those whose products or services are not available in the store and see RMNs as a way of accessing a sizeable new audience.

Here’s how they deliver:

Endemic retail media ads help brands and marketers break through the clutter, reaching shoppers at the crucial “moment of truth” in a purchasing cycle. While non-endemic ads have benefits of their own, creating a sense of urgency is not one of them. In many instances, non-endemic RMN ads require extra action from shoppers at another time and place. 

Done right, endemic ads on in-store retail media networks help shoppers feel “seen,” which can translate into incremental sales. That’s reflected in eMarketer research showing that about a third of shoppers (31.5%) will immediately decide to purchase a new brand or product that they just learned about in a store. By comparison, only 10% of shoppers make an immediate purchase following discovery on brand websites. In-store advertising can help open shoppers’ eyes to new and unexpected options.

Endemic ads can bring more flexibility and responsiveness to relationships between retailers and brands. The in-the-moment nature of digital displays encourages different ways of thinking about promotions by shortening lead times and opening up new cost-effective opportunities around events such as limited-time offers or product introductions. RMN collaboration also allows brands to help retailers drive adoption and engagement for their loyalty apps; on-screen ads can include QR codes that lead to digital coupons available only via the retailer’s app, for example.   

Research shows that impulse shopping is part of our nature, and not only for “treat” items such as a carton of gourmet ice cream. Impulses influence purchase decisions on things we need, too. About 70% of U.S. shoppers say they regularly make unplanned purchase decisions to some degree, according to Resonate. So even though a brand may not be on a shopper’s initial list, it still has a chance to sway decisions — and endemic advertising on in-store retail media can be a powerful influence in the moment.

The proof points for endemic advertising show at the cash register. An academic study of scanner panel data from a large U.S. grocery chain in 2022 found that in-store screens, when optimally distributed across a store, increase store revenue by about 11%. The study, published in the Journal of Retailing, was conducted by marketing professors from Indiana University, Lehigh University and Singapore Management University. The researchers also found that the closer the ads were in the store to the aisles where the products were on the shelf, the better they performed.

While the research is still coming in, it looks promising that RMNs can help drive incremental revenue and income. In-store retail media networks represent a powerful new advertising channel that’s already inspiring innovative approaches to marketing. Endemic advertising is the most powerful of tools, ready to advance the effectiveness of this new media channel.

Ameet Srivastava is Vice President of CPG Sales for In-Store Connect, Quad’s system for helping retailers reach shoppers in-store through a scalable network of digital display screens. Ameet is a veteran of the consumer-packaged goods industry, with almost a decade at Procter & Gamble. Based in San Francisco, Ameet focuses on helping brands use technology to engage consumers online, offline and everywhere in between.