According to The Shelby Report, new research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Grocery TV found that 43 percent of marketers say they underutilize in-store retail media even as they acknowledge the channel drives results across the full funnel. The survey identifies a documented deployment gap: brands see the mechanism work but have not moved budget or attention to match.
The mechanics are screens and audio placed at point-of-purchase in grocery, convenience, and retail environments. Shoppers encounter branded content while in decision mode, basket in hand, often within sight of the shelf. The IAB research shows marketers understand this placement drives awareness at top-of-funnel and conversion at bottom, yet nearly half report underdeploying.
The underlying mechanism is attention at the moment of highest commercial intent. A shopper scanning the pasta aisle is seconds from a purchase decision. A thirty-second message on a ceiling-mounted screen or endcap display reaches that person when consideration costs are lowest. Unlike social or search, which must pull a consumer from another task, in-store media intercepts existing shopping behavior. The brand pays for reach inside the store, not outside it, and the conversion window compresses to minutes instead of days.
The deployment gap exists because legacy budgets flow to digital channels with established attribution and bidding infrastructure. In-store retail media lacks the dashboard familiarity of Meta or Google, so marketers underfund it even when post-purchase data shows lift. Grocery TV and similar networks now offer programmatic buying and measurement, but adoption lags.
A small physical-product brand can test the channel without a national grocery contract. Approach a regional grocer or independent chain and propose a pilot: $1,500 to $3,000 for a four-week local screen placement in ten to twenty stores. Provide the creative as a fifteen-second looping video file. Negotiate reporting: total impressions, store traffic during campaign weeks, and scan data if the retailer shares it. Run the test in stores where your SKU is already on shelf, so the path from screen to basket is direct. Track sales velocity in test stores against matched control stores without the media buy. Document the lift, then expand or shift budget from a lower-performing channel.
Alternatively, participate in a retailer's existing in-store network. Chains like Kroger and Albertsons operate retail media divisions that sell screen inventory. Minimums vary, but some networks allow buys starting at $5,000 for a regional flight. The brand submits creative, selects store clusters by geography or demo, and receives impression and attributed sales reporting through the retailer's platform. This路径 offers speed: no hardware negotiation, no creative production beyond a standard video spec, and measurement built into the retailer's closed-loop system.
The broader pattern is channel arbitrage. When a survey shows 43 percent of marketers underutilize a medium they believe works, early movers capture attention at below-equilibrium cost. In-store retail media is now where podcast advertising was in 2018: underfunded relative to efficacy, which means inventory remains available and CPMs stay low. A physical-product brand that moves budget into the gap before competitors do buys share-of-voice at a structural discount. The window closes as deployment catches up to belief, so the play is immediate testing and fast scaling if the data confirms.
43% of marketers underuse in-store retail media despite full-funnel proof, creating a pricing and attention window for early physical brands.
Editorial & Disclosure Notice: This article was written with artificial intelligence from public sources and is published without individual human review. Artificial intelligence and other digital tools are also used for research, analysis, editing, formatting, and production. Errors, omissions, outdated information, or inaccuracies may occur. References to companies, brands, products, services, organizations, or individuals are for informational and editorial purposes and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, affiliation, partnership, or approval unless expressly stated. All trademarks and other intellectual property remain the property of their respective owners. Opinions, analysis, estimates, and commentary are informational only and should not be construed as financial, investment, legal, tax, medical, procurement, or other professional advice. Information may be corrected, clarified, or updated after publication. Corrections or removal requests: jenny@pops4.com.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.