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Retail media started online with Amazon, and digital is still the primary channel where most of the business takes place. However, in-store retail media has become one of the hottest topics in the field recently. This has attracted many new retailers into the game, as they seek to monetize their large in-store audiences.
This new wave of retailers is different from the first. Most of them reach far more people in their stores than through online channels. As a result, strategies and platform technologies originally developed for online retail media don't really work for retailers with an in-store focus. A new approach is needed.
Some markets, like the Nordics have followed this distinct path in retail media. For example, in Finland, the largest retailers began building in-store retail media networks and selling audiences to brands and suppliers years before it became a trend. Today, they already operate tens of thousands of screens across their stores and now they are connecting also other channels to help advertisers seamlessly reach consumers wherever they are.
As a Nordic-based company, Doohlabs has been closely involved in this development — building these networks and shaping the Store in the Core strategy through hands-on experience.
The Store in the Core strategy places the in-store retail media network at the center of retail media operations. It prioritizes the moment of purchase and connects other relevant retailer channels to it, creating media products that enable advertisers to reach consumers at every stage of the marketing funnel.
The core objective of the Store in the Core strategy is to monetize the retailer’s most valuable media asset — in-store audiences — by recognizing that delivering both maximum efficiency and an optimal customer experience requires planning consumer touchpoints across the most relevant channels simultaneously.
By following this strategy, retailers can build a solid foundation for their retail media business and start generating substantial, high-margin revenue streams early in the process.
The Store in the Core strategy is suitable for all major retailers with a store network and a customer base large enough to attract advertisers. The more specialized the retail chain, the fewer audience numbers are needed for stores to be a relevant media channel. Of course, the required scale is always market-specific.
At the heart of the strategy is a phased approach. It starts with building an in-store media network, and gradually adding other channels to diversify the offering for advertisers.
In the first phase, alongside building the in-store network, other channels (digital or non-digital) are selected based on their importance to media sales. This selection depends on the retailer and the market, and we advise starting with only the most active or valuable channels.
At the same time, a unified view of omnichannel inventory is built. This allows sales teams to easily see what media space is available in each channel and create media packages tailored to advertisers' audience and campaign goals.
The omnichannel inventory allows retailers to concentrate in building what matters the most - the retail media business – without renewing all related channel orchestration systems to achieve the wanted media products.
Subsequent phases can then focus on expanding the network, adding more channels, and experimenting with new media product formats — all with the aim of optimizing both advertiser results and retail media profitability.
The primary objective of the strategy is thus to build a functional, revenue-generating retail media business by leveraging existing assets and enabling omnichannel media sales to deliver tangible commercial value. Once a solid operating model is in place, retailers can begin to enhance it with refinements and more advanced features in automating the orchestration between channels.
Here’s a simple way to evaluate whether the Store in the Core strategy could be a good fit for your business:
If the answer to both is “in stores”, then this strategy — along with the right platform and technology solutions — is likely the clearest and most profitable retail media path forward.
Putting the store in the core doesn’t mean postponing the use of your omnichannel assets. Rather, it helps you prioritize actions in a way that enables you to start media sales quickly while connecting the channels that best support reaching consumers in critical phases of the marketing funnel.
