Blog posts
Parts of the industry have grown comfortable treating in-store retail media as a screen business rather than a data business. Inventory gets sold on the basis of footfall and location. Impressions get counted. Campaigns run. But the customer insight that should be driving all of it — the insight that retailers uniquely possess — often sits completely disconnected from the media operation.
This has to change. The brands investing seriously in retail media are starting to ask for the evidence that only this data can provide. The networks that can answer those questions will grow. The networks that cannot, will struggle to justify why they deserve a retail media budget at all.
Doohlabs originates from Finland. And in Finland, the value of retail customer data has long been self-evident. Two major grocery chains dominate the market with roughly 80 percent combined share — both with deep, long-running loyalty programmes. These retailers were also among the first in the world to start monetizing in-store audiences, doing so years before other markets caught on and before the industry had even agreed on what to call it. When we built our platform, connecting audience creation to transactional data was the obvious starting point. Of course you would use it. Why would you not?
When we then in our early years started meeting and talking to retailers in other markets, we ran into something we were not expecting. Retailer after retailer told us they did not have the data. We found this genuinely hard to understand, and it took us a while to figure out what was actually going on.
Two things were happening. First, many retailers did not realize that in-store retail media does not require individual-level shopper data — so they assumed the question was more complicated and more sensitive than it actually is. Second, the internal conversation between business developers and data or legal teams had often simply not happened. The value had not been made visible to the right people.
Once retailers understood what kind of data is actually needed, everything changed.
This point is worth being clear about, because confusion here is one of the main things that slows retailers down.
In-store retail media does not use personal shopper data. Advertisers never see individual purchase records or customer profiles. No customer data is exposed, transferred, or shared with any third party. What our platform uses is aggregated data — signals like the best-performing hours for a product category in each store, or which customer segments or buyer groups are most active in a particular part of the store at a given time.
This is pattern data derived from transactions. It tells a meaningful story about how shoppers behave without ever identifying who they are. When retailers' data security teams understand this — really understand it — the conversation shifts from "can we do this?" to "what is the most valuable data we can bring to this?"
That shift is the unlock.
Effective retail media is built on a structured understanding of customers: who they are, how they behave, and what they buy. Audience creation should not be based on generic demographics alone — it should be grounded in real purchasing behaviour and loyalty data, combined with contextual signals from the store itself.
At the most basic level, you can identify the best-selling hours for each product category, broken down by store. This alone gives advertisers something genuinely useful. Add demographic signals from loyalty data or customer insight, and the picture sharpens. Layer in actual purchase behavior — regular buyers of a category who have not responded to a recent promotion, customers who consistently choose premium in one category and private label in another — and you are offering something no other media channel can come close to replicating.
When the screens are placed at the end cap of each product category, the final piece falls into place. The right audience, at the right moment, sees the brand's message exactly where the purchasing decision is being made. This is where the real magic of in-store retail media lies. Not in the screens themselves. Not even in the data alone. In the combination.
Hannaleena Koskinen — our partner through ReTALE — Senior Vice President at Aller Media Nordic and a global pioneer in retail media, puts it well:
In retail media, the unique first-party data is the most powerful asset as it helps retailers to understand their customers' behaviour and build highly relevant audiences. For brands and advertisers, the data opens multiple options to test, optimise and learn — not just in optimising marketing, but also to test locations and validate target groups for new products and services. And it is important to note that retail media is the only media where you can actually track the impact of advertising in sales and customers directly.
That last point deserves emphasis. Retail media is the only channel where the loop between advertising exposure and actual purchase outcome can be closed with real data. That is not a minor operational feature. It is the entire value proposition.
One misconception that keeps surfacing is the idea that retailers need to build out additional data infrastructure before they can launch a serious retail media business. Computer vision. In-store sensors. Advanced attribution stacks. The list of prerequisites can grow until it becomes a reason to delay indefinitely.
The reality is more straightforward. All major retail chains already have the datasets required to launch a retail media business. This first-party data — built on real customer relationships and transaction history — is significantly more powerful for audience creation than datasets available from any external source. Technologies such as computer vision or in-store sensors can add genuine value in specific use cases, particularly in measurement, attribution, and reporting. But they should be viewed as enhancements, not prerequisites.
The core asset is already there. What matters is activating it.
Retail media has grown remarkably fast. But honest people in the industry will acknowledge that a meaningful share of what is being sold under the retail media label is not using what makes retail media special.
Networks built without transactional data are selling location-adjacent advertising. There is real value in proximity to the shelf — we would not argue otherwise. But it is not the same value proposition as a network powered by genuine customer insight, and it does not deserve the same investment over the long term. Sophisticated brand partners are getting better at knowing the difference, and they are starting to ask the questions that expose it.
Which customer segment was targeted? How did the campaign perform against buyers versus non-buyers of the category? What happened at the checkout? These are not unreasonable questions. They are the basic questions that first-party data should be able to answer — and networks that cannot answer them will increasingly struggle to hold on to serious budgets.
The genuine challenge here is internal, not technical. The data exists. The platforms to activate it exist. What gets in the way is alignment.
Getting upper management on board requires making the commercial case clearly: this data is a strategic asset with direct revenue implications, and leaving it disconnected from your media operation is leaving money on the table. Getting your data security team involved early is not optional — but it should be a straightforward conversation once they understand that customer data is never exposed in this model.
Every retailer, whatever their current data readiness, can start building their in-store retail media business now. You do not need a perfect data infrastructure from day one. You start with what you have, prove the value at each level, and build from there. The audience asset grows with the business.
What matters is making the intention clear, getting the right people aligned, and choosing a platform and partners capable of helping you extract the value that is already sitting in your systems.
--- A new IMG ---
There is another reason why first-party data matters so much — and it goes beyond what happens inside the store.
Retail media is increasingly an omnichannel discipline. In-store screens are the core for most retailers, particularly those whose customer base is primarily physical. But advertisers want to reach those same customers across other touchpoints too — digital channels, audio, programmatic placements, CRM. The Store in the Core strategy, which we have been developing with many of our customers for years, is built around exactly this: in-store as the foundation, with other channels connected around it.
First-party data is what makes this connection real. A large retail chain with properly activated customer data can offer advertisers genuine continuity — the same audience reached in-store and followed up through digital channels or introduced digitally and brought to the point of purchase in the store. Without it, omnichannel retail media is just a collection of separately managed inventory sources. With it, the retailer can offer something coherent and commercially compelling across the entire shopper journey.
As retail media matures, advertisers are becoming increasingly sophisticated about what they are actually buying. The best brand partners are no longer satisfied with reach and impressions alone — they want audiences built on real purchase behaviour, and they are starting to make this a condition of investment. Retailers who can offer that will find themselves in a very different commercial conversation than those who cannot. Those who cannot will find the gap harder to close with every passing year.
The retailers who treat their customer insight as the genuine asset it is will be the ones that attract long-term brand investment, build sustainable competitive advantage, and define what in-store retail media looks like at its best. The data is already there. The opportunity is to start using it properly.
---
Doohlabs is an end-to-end in-store retail media platform that helps retailers turn their customer insight into audiences that advertisers want to buy. Learn more at doohlabs.com.
