Retail Media Intel

Executive summary

In-store is now the decisive retail media battleground, but with two opposite playbooks. In the UK, Booker Wholesale deployed 500+ Sony 65-inch Bravia Professional Displays across 100 locations in eight weeks with Pixel Inspiration, dunnhumby and DISE CMS to target trade shoppers at rack-ends. In Romania, Auchan Retail Media launched immersive 18sqm curved LED entrances plus 1,000 screens in 100 stores, citing eye-tracking at 100% notice, 60%+ recall and 15-20% conversion for known brands across 300+ brands and 6,000 campaigns. In MENA, Precision Media by Majid Al Futtaim used its inaugural Retail Media Summit at Dubai Museum of the Future to launch Precision Insights, claiming 420+ stores, 600M physical visits, 320M digital visits, 14M SHARE loyalty members and 300+ brands tied together with viewed-impression billing and AI audiences from 50+ signals. The counter-signal is Target. Via Roundel VP Jenny Holleran, Target said it will only add in-store digital screens if they do not disrupt experience, pitching instead app and mobile web reach used by 60% of in-store shoppers. That caution validates the parallel hardware path: ruggedized SoC displays, ESL and e-paper from AUO Display Plus and E Ink, and smart carts from Instacart Caper, Shopic, Cust2Mate, Hanshow/shopreme and Veeve moving from trials to multi-thousand-cart deployments that combine checkout, loyalty, navigation and media. In-store media is scaling, but the UX and measurement bar just rose. Offsite is where retail media escapes the store. Best Buy Ads partnered with LG Ad Solutions to sell Home Screen plus CTV via Magnite programmatic with closed-loop measurement on Best Buy shopper data, supporting a $900M ad-spend base and $1.3B Marketplace GMV story toward $44B revenue by 2029. Magnite separately locked a three-year exclusive as LG Ad Solutions CTV ad server via SpringServe. TripleLift on Oct 13 became the first US offsite partner for Uber Advertising, packaging ride, order and shop signals into PMP deals across open-web display, native and video bought in existing DSPs. European marketplace bol, via Chief Advertising Officer Joris Scheepens, pitched the same full-journey shift across Netherlands and Belgium with Sponsored Products, Display Onsite, Display Offsite, branded pages, video and creators. Commerce and shopping data explains why closed-loop and shoppable are now mandatory. EY Ireland found 69% used AI in customer interactions but only 8% trust AI agents to purchase, a 61-point ask-versus-buy gap focused on price, speed, VAT, delivery and sponsored disclosure across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. At the same time Pacvue is exposing commerce media data via MCP Server for agentic workflows, Google Ads is rolling out automated spend optimization across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen, Boots hired ex-Amazon and M&S Murray Beckett to lead Omnichannel and Retail Media while piloting TikTok Shop with THG Commerce for No7, and Precision Media launched Shoppable Ads with closed-loop attribution through the Carrefour catalogue. Product feeds, checkout and media measurement are converging into one system.

Market dynamics

Three structural forces dominate. First, budgets are migrating from trade allowances to measurable media, but infrastructure lags. The Campaign MENA roundtable with Kraft Heinz, Alshaya, Publicis Media and The Trade Desk concluded MENA retail media has scale via multi-category groups like Majid Al Futtaim, Alshaya and Landmark plus household-level loyalty data, yet lacks common standards, budget ownership and comparable measurement. Precision Media answered with viewed-impression billing and transaction-tied Precision Insights, Auchan answered with notice, recall and conversion proof points, and Best Buy answered with closed-loop CTV. Whoever defines the impression and attribution standard captures budgets. Second, technology is collapsing the funnel between discovery, media and transaction. Smart carts merge POS, Wi-Fi, loyalty and screens, e-paper vendors reposition ESL as media surfaces, DISE plus Sony Remote Device Manager plus ruggedized mounts make national in-store networks deployable in weeks, and Magnite plus SpringServe plus LG plus TripleLift plus Uber move commerce signals into programmatic CTV and open web. On the commerce side, MCP exposure of feeds, Google automated Shopping controls, and shoppable checkout from news.com.au Checkout, TikTok Shop and Carrefour catalogue mean a product feed is now media inventory and media is now a storefront. Third, trust and localization constrain automation. Only 8% trust AI to buy despite 84% of Australian shoppers waiting for Black Friday sales and 8M Australians using AI for decisions, per News Australia and Growth Distillery. TDMC lessons from Africa argue checkout localization around pricing, local wallets, honest delivery and payday timing beats price as a converter. Privacy-safe, first-party, loyalty-anchored audiences are therefore the only scalable targeting asset, which favors retailers with SHARE-like programs, bol-style marketplace data, and Uber ride plus order graphs over third-party data plays.

Key developments

Strategic implications

Builders should treat measurement as the product, not a feature. Viewed-impression billing, transaction-matched exposure via loyalty like SHARE, and eye-tracking to recall to conversion proof like Auchan are becoming table stakes for in-store budgets. For offsite, closed-loop CTV and PMP audiences from Best Buy, LG, Magnite, Uber and TripleLift show buyers will pay only when retail data improves programmatic performance inside their DSP. If you build retail media tooling, prioritize privacy-safe identity resolution, in-store impression verification, and DSP-native activation over another dashboard. The cross-domain opportunity is feed-powered shoppable media. Product feeds already drive Google Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen automation, and MCP servers will make them legible to AI agents. Combine that with Shoppable Ads, TikTok Shop pilots, and news.com.au Checkout style publisher checkout to collapse discovery to transaction. Smart carts, ESL, e-paper and app-mediated in-store reach from Target and bol full-funnel onsite-to-offsite give the physical counterpart. Winners will link one SKU graph across Sponsored Products, offsite display, CTV, in-store screens and agent answers with unified attribution. Prioritize interoperability and localization. MENA leaders explicitly demand programmatic standards and retail-specific creative, Africa checkout lessons demand wallets, payday timing and honest delivery, and Circana elevating global retail media and commerce leadership signals measurement consolidation. Build modular connectors for CMS like DISE, ad servers like SpringServe, loyalty graphs and local payment, not a closed suite.

Competitive landscape

Scale leaders are defining standards while infrastructure vendors consolidate control. Majid Al Futtaim Precision Media leads regional closed-loop ambition, Auchan and Booker prove in-store deployment at scale, and bol and Best Buy prove marketplace and electronics offsite extension. Underneath, Magnite plus SpringServe plus LG owns emerging CTV home-screen supply, TripleLift plus Uber productizes commerce audiences for open web, and Sony plus Pixel Inspiration plus dunnhumby plus DISE is the repeatable in-store stack. Google, Pacvue and agent platforms own the feed and automation layer where commerce advantage will compound, while Circana, Publicis, The Trade Desk and dunnhumby compete to be the measurement arbiter.

Action items

Trend lines

Contradictions

• Target cautious evaluation of in-store screens contradicts Booker, Auchan and MAF rapid national-scale deployment
• Push for offsite open-web and CTV audience sales via TripleLift, Magnite and LG contradicts walled-garden control and privacy concerns raised in MENA and ASOS/M&S discourse
• AI automation and agentic shopping expansion contradicts 8% consumer trust in AI shopping assistants

Blind Spots

• No viewed-impression, frequency or creative standards for in-store screens despite scale claims from Auchan, Booker and MAF
• Privacy, consent and cross-retailer identity resolution for offsite CTV audiences largely unaddressed
• Cost, ruggedization, power and operational upkeep of LED, BRAVIA and e-paper fleets plus smart cart ROI absent from launch narratives

Connections

• Smart carts and ESL turn checkout friction work in Africa and shoppable checkout in Australia into measurable in-store media inventory
• Offsite CTV home-screen deals make TV operating systems the new shelf space, linking Best Buy-LG and Uber-TripleLift models tobol relevant-moment strategy
• Closed-loop sales measurement from Carrefour Precision Insights could resolve AI-shopping trust gap by providing transparent proof of pricing and delivery promises

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