The Interactive Advertising Bureau and Grocery TV on October 1, 2026 published research in which 43% of 100 US retail media buyers and decision-makers said their organisation is underutilising its in-store retail media investment. According to the two organisations, the shortfall has less to do with doubts over whether shops belong in a media plan than with who controls the money, how much inventory can be bought and how results are counted.

In Short

Two advertising organisations asked 100 people who buy ads inside shops how they use them, and 43 said their company is not getting as much from those screens, speakers and displays as it could. It matters for brands, agencies and retailers because the answers point less to doubts about shop ads and more to which team owns them, whether there are enough screens to buy and how results get measured. What changes is the yardstick: almost every respondent called awareness, consideration, sales and loyalty important measures, so shop ads are being held to the same range of goals as television and online campaigns rather than only to sales at the shelf.

A survey of 100 people already spending in stores

The survey reached 100 respondents in the United States who plan, allocate or influence retail media budgets and who already had active in-store retail media investments, according to the methodology note published with the release. They came from brands, agencies and retail media networks. The release does not say how many came from each group.

The report, titled In-Store Retail Media's Full-Funnel Opportunity, was commissioned by Grocery TV and the IAB and fielded online in July 2026 through the IAB's Insights Engine, a research service powered by Attest. For the purposes of the study, in-store retail media means paid advertising inside physical retail environments, including digital screens, audio and displays. Traditional merchandising and trade promotions are excluded.

That definition differs in one respect from the industry standard the IAB itself helped write. The joint IAB and IAB Europe in-store definitions, first opened for public comment on September 18, 2024 and finalised that December, cover digital screens, audio and connected shopping formats such as smart carts. The Version 2 draft IAB Europe opened for comment on September 17, 2026 still leaves printed and static formats to future iterations. The survey definition lists "displays" without saying whether printed fixtures were in scope.

The full report was not among the materials reviewed for this article. The figures below come from the release issued by the two organisations.

Four funnel stages on one scorecard

More than 90% of respondents rated awareness or reach, consideration, sales lift, and repeat purchase or loyalty as important or essential metrics for evaluating media investments, according to IAB and Grocery TV. The two organisations read this as evidence that marketers now treat in-store as a full-funnel channel rather than mainly a point-of-purchase or shopper marketing tactic.

Two details in the wording deserve attention. The release describes the four metrics as measures for evaluating "media investments", not in-store investments specifically, so the published text does not settle whether respondents were scoring the channel or their media plans in general. Nor does it say whether each metric individually cleared the 90% mark. And when nearly every respondent rates every stage of the funnel as important, the result says more about the breadth of expectation than about priorities; which of the four mattered most is not disclosed.

The framing has been building in retailer and vendor messaging for months. When The Raley's Companies and Grocery TV put an in-store network into 208 stores across California, Nevada and Arizona on May 20, 2026, the retailer described it as one element of a full-funnel retail media strategy. Grocery TV had by then assembled what it called a full-funnel measurement suite of foot traffic, brand lift and consideration tracking, and in April it added third-party sales lift data from ABCS Insights, drawn from a 41 million-household panel combining receipts and card transactions.

Outside data suggests the line between brand-building media and store sales was never clean. An analysis by Incremental, covering 150,000 campaigns and $350 million of spend across four networks and published on June 15, 2026, found that 42% of the incremental effect of off-site video and 38% of on-site DSP campaigns arrived as in-store purchases, against 7% for on-site search. The same vendor-supplied study estimated that attribution confined to one retailer missed between 36% and 53% of campaign impact. The new survey asks the reverse question. Can a screen at the deli counter do the work of a brand campaign?

Who holds the budget

The most consequential finding carries no number. Organisations with dedicated retail media teams, and with national media or brand teams, are more likely to report making full use of in-store media, according to IAB and Grocery TV, while organisations where shopper or trade marketing owns the channel are more likely to report underutilisation. The release gives no percentages for either group. It describes an association, and an association is not evidence that moving the budget would change the result.

Marlow Nickell, co-founder and chief executive of Grocery TV, framed the split as organisational. "In-store has traditionally lived within shopper marketing, but our research shows that marketers are beginning to see a bigger role for the channel," Nickell said. "National media, brand and retail media teams bring different objectives, budgets and measurement approaches to the conversation. Bringing those perspectives together can help marketers incorporate in-store more deliberately into the media plan."

The diagnosis is not new. In-Store Marketplace, which is backed by Mood Media, and Catalyst Media Consulting argued on April 7, 2026 that four incompatible scorecards were stalling in-store investment, with agencies, merchants, retail media networks and shopper marketing teams each judging the same activation differently; the IAB's Collin Colburn was among the contributors quoted in that report. IAB Ireland's December 2025 report described FMCG brands running brand, shopper marketing, trade and digital budgets as separate pools, each with its own objectives, KPIs and data. In Sydney on July 7, 2026, IAB Australia research found 56% of buyers keeping trade and media budgets apart, with two thirds using retail media only for products the retailer itself sells.

The survey's own definition sharpens the tension. It excludes trade promotions from in-store retail media, yet the companies reporting the most underutilisation are, by the release's account, more often those where trade or shopper teams hold the money. Networks have noticed the ceiling that creates. Metcash, which runs more than 800 screens in Australia, argued in July 2026 that judging retail media mainly on incremental sales limits its access to brand budgets.

Technology suppliers are trying to bridge the same gap from the other side. At Cannes Lions in June 2026, Broadsign and Mirakl Ads presented a deal to connect online and in-store retail media under a single campaign brief, with availability planned for the third quarter.

Scale ahead of measurement and price

Fifty-nine percent of respondents ranked inventory and scale among their top three factors when evaluating in-store digital media investment, ahead of measurement opportunities and cost/CPM, according to IAB and Grocery TV. The release does not publish the shares for those two factors, so the size of the gap is unknown.

Scale in physical stores is unevenly distributed. Walmart Connect operates 170,000 digital screens across more than 4,500 stores. Independent networks are smaller and have been consolidating. Grocery TV described itself as covering more than 6,500 US stores in April and passed 6,700 after the Raley's deal in May. On August 25, 2026, Perion agreed to buy in-store network PRN for up to $12 million in cash, a footprint spanning more than 750 warehouse club locations, more than 4,500 big-box stores and more than 2,200 healthcare stores; weeks earlier it had won Best Buy Canada's 308-store retail media network.

Counting that scale is itself contested. Under the Version 2 draft, IAB Europe proposes that retailers stop starting audience estimates from the number of times an ad plays and start instead from store footfall, using a six-input calculation for opportunity to see. Until networks apply the same method, a buyer comparing the reach of two in-store sellers may be comparing different units.

The scale finding also sits comfortably with Grocery TV's commercial pitch. According to Grocery TV, more than 120 retailers work with the company, its network reaches one in four Americans across more than 6,700 stores, and 90% of purchases take place in stores. None of those figures is independently sourced in the release. Survey research commissioned by a seller of the inventory under discussion is common in advertising; it is also context the release discloses only in its methodology note.

What stands in the way

Activation complexity and measurement limitations tied as the top barriers to further investment, each cited by 27% of respondents, followed by a lack of creative resources at 23%, according to IAB and Grocery TV. In a sample of 100, that means 27 people for each of the first two and 23 for the third. A gap of four respondents is small enough that the ordering between the three is a loose guide at best. If respondents could pick only one barrier, the three named answers account for 77 responses; the release does not say how the question was structured or what the remaining answers were.

Proof of performance and better KPI alignment across teams were the two factors most often cited as reasons respondents would be more likely to invest, according to the release. No percentages were published for either.

Colburn, vice president of commerce and retail media at the IAB, presented the issue as one of integration rather than persuasion. "In-store media is becoming an increasingly important part of retail media's evolution," Colburn said. "For marketers, the question now is how to integrate in-store into their media strategy in a way that makes sense for their objectives, teams and investment priorities."

Activation complexity has a technical explanation. Most in-store inventory is still sold through insertion orders negotiated directly between brands and retailers' media arms, and the programmatic route runs over plumbing built for digital out-of-home screens rather than for retail. The creative problem is partly a content problem. Grocery TV's own survey of 1,018 US grocery shoppers, published on June 2, 2026 across 15 display formats, ranked current promotions as the most wanted screen content at 51.5% and personalised offers based on past purchases last at 27.8% - material that has to be produced for a store and its zones rather than lifted from another channel.

A measurement map still being drawn

Measurement is where the industry's reference documents disagree most. The IAB and IAB Europe incremental measurement guidelines of November 3, 2025 defined incrementality as the outcomes a campaign caused compared with what would have happened without it, and placed platform-reported figures in the weakest evidence tier. On April 7, 2026, a paper co-written by Colburn and Instacart's Priyash Shahane argued that marketing mix modelling undercounts retail media and that closed-loop, incremental measurement belongs at the centre of budget decisions.

Others have since proposed their own rules. The Association of National Advertisers published a retail media measurement standardisation report on August 18, 2026, built from consultation with more than 40 brand heads of media and networks including Walmart Connect, Instacart and Albertsons Media Collective; it recommended a standard 14-day lookback window. IAB Europe's in-store draft moves the recommended pre- and post-campaign sales windows from 30 days to 28, while the default for IAB Europe's wider commerce media standards remains 30 days. Three documents, three windows.

A further mismatch runs through sales lift itself. More than 90% of the US respondents rated it an important or essential metric. IAB Europe's release for the Version 2 in-store draft listed the removal of sales lift and brand sales lift metrics, a change the draft's own summary table does not record. Comments on that draft close on October 23, 2026.

How much money is involved

The release contains no spending figures. The 43% describes a share of respondents, not a share of budgets, and says nothing about how much in-store money is at stake.

The surrounding numbers are large. US commerce media revenue grew 18% to $63.4 billion in 2025, according to the IAB and PwC report published on April 16, 2026. In its September 10, 2026 outlook update, the IAB raised its 2026 growth forecast for commerce media to 13.6% from the 12.1% it projected in January, and cut digital out-of-home to 7.0% from 7.4%. The channel lines in that update do not include a separate figure for in-store. In Europe, IAB Europe's AdEx Benchmark of July 2026 measured retail media on a basis that excludes in-store altogether.

Why this matters for the marketing community

For buyers, the survey moves the debate about in-store media away from whether it works and towards who is allowed to spend on it. If national media and brand teams are the ones reporting full use, the channel's growth depends on budgets that are planned against reach and awareness, not against trade terms. That is the shift Metcash, In-Store Marketplace and IAB Ireland have each described from different angles over the past year, and it explains why KPI alignment appears alongside proof of performance as a condition for more spending.

For networks, the scale result points in one direction: towards bigger footprints and fewer, larger sellers. Perion's purchase of PRN and Grocery TV's growth past 6,700 stores fit that pattern. Yet scale only becomes comparable once counting converges, and the IAB Europe draft, the ANA report and the IAB's own incrementality guidelines are still pulling in different directions on windows and on whether sales lift belongs in the standard at all.

The research has limits that matter as much as its headline. It rests on 100 respondents, it does not separate the answers of brands, agencies and the networks that sell the inventory, and it was commissioned in part by one of those sellers. Its most interesting finding - the link between ownership and underutilisation - is published without numbers. Those are the figures the full report would need to supply.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Interactive Advertising Bureau, the New York-based trade body founded in 1996 with more than 700 member companies, and Grocery TV, an in-store retail media company that says it works with more than 120 retailers across more than 6,700 US stores. Collin Colburn, the IAB's vice president of commerce and retail media, and Marlow Nickell, Grocery TV's co-founder and chief executive, are quoted. Respondents were 100 US buyers and decision-makers from brands, agencies and retail media networks.

What: A survey report, In-Store Retail Media's Full-Funnel Opportunity, finding that 43% of respondents say their organisation is underutilising its in-store retail media investment, that more than 90% rate awareness, consideration, sales lift and loyalty as important or essential metrics for evaluating media investments, and that 59% rank inventory and scale among their top three evaluation factors. Activation complexity and measurement limitations tied as the top barriers at 27% each, with creative resources at 23%. Organisations where shopper or trade marketing owns the channel are more likely to report underutilisation; no figures were published for that comparison.

When: Published on October 1, 2026. The survey was fielded online in July 2026.

Where: The research covers the United States and was released from New York City. It was fielded through the IAB's Insights Engine, powered by Attest.

Why: The IAB and Grocery TV present the findings as evidence that in-store media has moved beyond shopper marketing, and that the barriers to more spending are organisational ownership, available scale and measurement rather than doubts about the channel. The report arrives as IAB Europe, the ANA and the IAB's own guidelines continue to differ on how in-store audiences and sales are counted, and as networks such as Perion and Grocery TV expand their store footprints.