This article was based on the interview with ISM’s Paul Brenner and IAB’s Collin Colburn on why the old rules no longer apply to retail media measurement by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
As marketing leaders, we’ve become accustomed to a certain cadence of innovation. A new channel emerges, we test, we learn, and we scale. Technology is rarely the long-term barrier; it’s almost always a question of strategy, alignment, and measurement. The world of retail media networks (RMNs) has followed this path, rocketing from a niche channel to a foundational pillar of many marketing budgets. Yet, for all its growth, a significant piece of the puzzle remains stubbornly in the “experimental” phase for many: in-store media. While the majority of retail transactions still occur within four physical walls, the digital media assets within those walls are often treated as a perplexing add-on rather than a core component of the omni-channel strategy.
The friction isn’t due to a lack of screens, audio networks, or measurement capabilities. The technology exists. The real barrier, as uncovered in recent industry discussions, is far more fundamental and, frankly, more familiar to anyone who has managed a complex marketing organization. It’s a problem of language and perspective. We have media teams speaking in ROAS, merchant teams focused on sell-through, and RMNs targeting revenue growth—all looking at the same campaign but evaluating it against different scorecards. This strategic disconnect, born from applying digital-native measurement frameworks to a messy, multi-faceted physical environment, is preventing in-store media from reaching its true potential. To unlock the next wave of growth, we must first agree on what success actually looks like.
The Flaw of Digital-First Metrics in a Physical World
The temptation, of course, is to take what works online and apply it in-store. We are, after all, creatures of habit, and the precision promised by digital attribution models is seductive. The click, the impression, the conversion—these are the building blocks of modern marketing measurement. The problem is that the physical store is not a website. A shopper’s journey down an aisle is influenced by a symphony of factors that a simple one-to-one attribution model cannot possibly account for. Applying a digital ROAS model to an in-store screen is like trying to measure the quality of a five-course meal by only counting the calories. You get a number, but you miss the entire point.
This approach not only provides a distorted view of performance but actively creates organizational friction. When an in-store digital campaign is judged solely by its ability to directly drive an immediate sale in the same way a search ad does, it’s being set up to fail. Paul Brenner of Instore Marketplace points out that this myopic focus on a single tactic ignores the broader business objective that brands truly care about: moving product, holistically.
“If you take a digital one-to-one attribution approach, a ROAS approach, what you end up doing is correlation to a tactic… But what you really wanna know as a brand is you made a total investment with this retailer… and units sold at this level. Do you really need to know which specific tactic thing that attribute to, to technology? Yeah, maybe for efficiency’s sake… But you’re really looking at a pretty messy environment with a lot of legacy linear signage, printed signage that’s not going away, and like how can you really say that this one tech thing was the cause of your ROAS and your outcome?” – Paul Brenner
Brenner’s point is critical for any leader trying to build a truly integrated strategy. The goal isn’t to prove that a specific screen “worked.” The goal is to understand if the total investment made with a retail partner—encompassing media, trade spend, promotions, and placement—resulted in the desired business outcome. By clinging to tactical, digital-first metrics, we inadvertently silo our thinking and our budgets, preventing us from seeing the powerful interplay between all the elements that drive a purchase decision in the physical world.
Building a Common Language: The Case for a Unified Framework
If the problem is a lack of a shared definition of success, the solution must be to create one. This isn’t about inventing a new, silver-bullet KPI that will magically solve everything. The industry has enough acronyms. Instead, it’s about creating a framework that aggregates existing data points from different parts of the business into a single, coherent narrative. This is the idea behind concepts like the Shopper Purchase Rate (SPR), a framework designed not to replace metrics like ROAS, but to contextualize them within a broader business view.
The core idea is to move from a tactical attribution debate to a strategic business conversation. Imagine bringing the scorecards from the media team, the merchandising team, and the RMN team into the same room. The framework’s job is to act as a Rosetta Stone, translating the disparate KPIs into a single, overarching story of total investment versus total units moved. This approach acknowledges the complexity of the in-store environment rather than trying to oversimplify it. Collin Colburn of the IAB emphasizes that this is about creating a productive starting point for a more meaningful conversation.
“It’s introducing the conversation starter for the industry to start thinking about multiple metrics together… It’s really taking those scorecards from those different stakeholders and providing a framework to… actually have that conversation in a productive way across the different organizations that are involved.” – Collin Colburn
This shift is less about technology and more about organizational discipline. It requires leaders to champion a cross-functional view and encourage their teams to look beyond the confines of their individual dashboards. By aligning around a shared understanding that the ultimate goal is selling more products, the conversation can move from “Which tactic gets the credit?” to “How did our combined efforts drive overall growth, and how can we optimize that entire system?” This is the unlock that can move in-store media from a line item in the experimental budget to a scalable, repeatable investment.
The Strategic Imperative: Unlocking the RMNs’ Unfair Advantage
Adopting a unified measurement framework for in-store media is more than just an operational improvement; it’s a profound strategic opportunity. For years, the retail media conversation has been dominated by pure-play e-commerce giants. However, traditional retailers possess a powerful, often under-leveraged asset: the physical store, where the vast majority of commerce still takes place. By failing to properly measure and integrate the impact of their in-store media, these retailers are leaving their greatest competitive advantage on the table.
When RMNs can effectively demonstrate how investments in their physical footprint contribute to the total volume of units moved, the entire value proposition changes. It elevates the conversation beyond a simple media buy and repositions the RMN as a true business partner capable of driving growth across the entire path to purchase. This is the key to rebalancing the retail media landscape and unlocking budgets that have historically been allocated to purely digital players. As Paul Brenner notes, solving this measurement challenge could fundamentally alter the industry’s power dynamics.
“[T]he retail media networks aren’t really introducing what the physical store contributes… to their RMN, right? There, there’s that advantage over Amazon and nobody’s really talking about, and if you can solve for this problem of giving credit towards the right things, I think you’ll see a very different pie chart.” – Paul Brenner
For marketing leaders at brands, this is the signal to start demanding a more holistic view from your retail partners. The conversation should not be about whether to invest in on-site search or in-store screens. It should be about how to construct an integrated investment strategy that leverages the retailer’s full omni-channel ecosystem to move the most product. This requires pushing RMNs to break down their own internal silos and present a unified front that reflects the reality of how consumers shop.
The path forward for in-store retail media is clear, and it has less to do with installing new hardware and more to do with rewiring our organizational software. The initial, exuberant growth phase of retail media is maturing into a more operational and execution-focused era. Success will no longer be defined by simply launching a network, but by demonstrating integrated, cross-channel value. Frameworks that create a common language—translating media metrics and merchant KPIs into the universal business outcome of units sold—are the essential next step in this evolution.
As leaders, our role is to facilitate this shift in perspective. It means challenging our teams and our partners to look beyond the comfort of familiar, if flawed, metrics. It means championing a measurement philosophy that embraces the inherent messiness of the real world rather than trying to force it into a neat, digital box. The brands and retailers who successfully navigate this transition will be the ones who unlock the true potential of the physical store, transforming it from a simple point of sale into a powerful, measurable media channel that finally gets the strategic investment it deserves.
