National Association for Convenience Stores
Creating contextually relevant retail media with Cooler Screens at NACS
The screens are intended to include real-time contextually relevant promotions and product information for shoppers on digital door displays in brick-and-mortar stores. The company partners with national retailers like Kroger, Walgreens, Giant Eagle’s GetGo convenience stores, Chevron, Areas, Parkland and Western Union.
“We’re showcasing a technology that is allowing the brands to connect with shoppers in-store and activate their marketing strategies at the moment of decision making [and] at point of sale, driving both the brand building strategy they might have as well as increasing their sales,” Avakian explained.
By identifying precise activation points along a shopper’s “path to purchase,” Avakian explained, the digital screens, which are outfitted with sensors that gauge human behavior, serve as an interactive opportunity for brands to develop more targeted messaging about the product and the brand’s story.
“Did they spend one second or five seconds reading information about a product? We created a proxy of similar data signals in a physical store where the sensors are allowing us to understand the shopper,” he added.
Retail media opens opportunities for brands to effectively reach consumers by leveraging first-party data from retailers. According to data from Reuters, retail media is expected to reach $125.7 billion in 2023, surpassing television revenue in 2018, representing 15.4% of total ad revenue,
Since the pandemic, shoppers have moved towards digital channels, increasing the value of data; however, with the rise of privacy concerns surrounding third-party cookies on websites, retailers can instead leverage direct purchase information from shoppers to then sell add space to brands.
Driven by first-party and loyalty data from grocery e-commerce, retail media offers an opportunity for brands to implement targeted messaging for shoppers and differentiate themselves from competitors across brick-and-mortar channels, from grocery to c-stores.
