Advertising money is moving toward screens faster than it has in years, and brands genuinely want to reach people inside your stores. But in-store screens still take in under 1% of all retail media spending. That gap is not an accident. Most networks are not built to sell. Below are the five questions that decide whether yours is ready. And if the answer is not yet, the cheapest place to start is selling screen time to the suppliers who already buy end caps and flyers from you.
Every few weeks someone asks me a version of the same question. We have screens in our stores, brands keep asking about them, is there money here?
The honest answer has two halves, and most people only ever get told the first one.
The money moved this year, and it is not subtle
A few numbers from the last several months, because they set the table.
US out-of-home advertising revenue passed $3 billion in a single quarter for the first time. Second quarter 2026 came in at $3.16 billion, up 10.7% year over year. The digital slice grew 18.5% and now makes up 38.4% of the total (Out of Home Advertising Association of America, reported August 2026).
Investors noticed. Clear Channel Outdoor agreed in February to go private in a $6.2 billion deal. In August, an infrastructure fund agreed to buy the Australian operator oOh!media at roughly double its undisturbed share price. Also in August, the cinema advertising company National CineMedia agreed to pay $275 million for Captivate, which runs screens in office lobbies and elevators. That last one is the tell. A company built on movie theatres just paid a quarter of a billion dollars to reach people waiting for an elevator.
Retailers are moving too. Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK, launched its own advertising business against its 24 million loyalty card holders. Circle K relaunched its retail media network with better targeting and measurement.
Globally, retail media advertising is forecast to pass $200 billion in 2026 (invidis, August 2026, citing industry forecasts). So the obvious question from anyone who owns a few hundred screens is: where is my cut?
The number nobody puts in the sales deck
Here it is. Digital in-store screens account for under 1% of total US retail media spending, and eMarketer's forecast still has it at 0.8% in 2028 (eMarketer, In-Store Retail Media). A separate eMarketer forecast expects in-store spend to grow 33.1% during 2026, which sounds enormous until you remember what it is growing from.
You will sometimes see a bigger number quoted, usually around 3.3%. That one takes Amazon and Walmart out of the denominator before it does the maths. Worth knowing which version you are being shown.
Both things are true at once. The growth rate is real. The base is tiny.
I bring this up because the two numbers get used very differently. A vendor pitching you a monetization module will quote the 33% and the $200 billion. The under 1% figure tells you something more useful: this is hard, and most people who have tried are not there yet.
Why the gap exists
Having looked at a lot of networks, the blockers are boringly consistent.
Buyers cannot count your audience. An advertiser buying screens wants an impression number built on a method they recognise. "We have 400 screens and 2 million visitors a month" is not that. Without an audience measure someone will underwrite, you are negotiating from a story instead of a number.
The screens cannot be bought the way media is bought. Media buyers work through platforms. If selling a campaign on your network involves an email to your marketing coordinator and a manual playlist change, you have a business, but you do not have inventory. That plumbing is a real project.
The content operation is already stretched. Most networks I see are behind on their own content. Adding a paying third party with deadlines, approval rounds and proof of play reporting does not fix a content problem. It applies pressure to it.
Nobody owns it. Retail media sits between marketing, merchandising, store operations and finance. When it belongs to everyone, it moves at the speed of the slowest meeting. This is the one that kills most efforts, and it has nothing to do with technology.
Five questions before you sell a single ad
Work through these honestly. If you cannot answer at least four of them, the answer is not yet.
1. Can you state your audience in a number a buyer will accept?
Not visitor counts. An impression estimate with a stated method behind it. If you cannot produce one, that is your first project, not your last.
2. Would a brand pay for this location, or only for your customers?
There is a difference between a screen at the point of decision and a screen near the exit. Be honest about which ones you actually have.
3. Can you run a campaign without a person touching it?
Scheduling, targeting by store or time, and a report at the end. If each of those is manual, your cost to serve will eat the revenue.
4. Do you have someone whose job this is?
Not a committee. A named person with a target.
5. What happens to the shopper experience?
Every ad slot you sell is a slot not doing your own work. If your screens currently drive basket size or reduce staff questions, selling that space has a cost. Price it.
What you have versus what a buyer needs
| What most networks have | What an advertiser is buying |
|---|---|
| Screen count | Verified impressions, with a method |
| Store list | Audience segments they can target |
| A CMS with a playlist | Inventory they can book through a platform |
| Screenshots as proof | Proof of play and campaign reporting |
| A marketing owner | A commercial owner with a rate card |
The left column is not a failure. It is a normal, healthy signage network. It is just not a media product yet, and the distance between the two columns is the actual project.
If the answer is not yet
That is the common outcome, and it is fine. There is a version of this that pays off sooner and costs far less.
Sell to your own suppliers first. If you are a grocer, your vendors already spend money with you on end caps and flyers. Screen time is an easier conversation with someone who already has a budget pointed at you than with a media agency who has never heard of your network. It is smaller money, but the sales cycle is short and it teaches you what buyers ask for. Those questions are your build list.
Then fix measurement before you fix anything else. Every other blocker gets easier once you can count. My post on measuring digital signage ROI covers how to build a number that holds up, and the ROI calculator gives you a first pass at one in a couple of minutes.
And if your content operation is the thing that is stretched, start there instead. Why retail digital signage fails goes through that in detail. A network that cannot keep its own content current will not survive a paying advertiser.
Worth watching
In-store retail media measurement standards are still settling. Until buyers agree on how an in-store impression is counted, individual retailers will keep negotiating one deal at a time, which is slow and favours the very large. If you are a mid-sized operator, that is the thing to track. The moment counting gets standardised is the moment your inventory becomes easy to buy.
- In-store screens take under 1% of US retail media spend, and the forecast still has it at 0.8% in 2028.
- The blockers are measurement, buyability, content capacity and ownership. Only one of those is technical.
- Buyers need impressions with a stated method behind them. Screen counts and footfall are not that.
- When retail media belongs to everyone, it moves at the speed of the slowest meeting.
- Selling screen time to your own suppliers is the short sales cycle. Start there.
- Fix measurement before anything else. Every other blocker gets easier once you can count.
- Every slot you sell is a slot not doing your own work. Price that cost.