Paul Brenner and Collin Colburn explore how attribution methods need to reflect the different purchase locations to get a truer picture of what is driving sales on and off-line
Brands want to spend money on in-store media. Retailers want to sell them the inventory. And yet, budgets keep stalling.
Last year alone, one Retail Media Network (RMN) shared that organisational measurement requirements blocked five separate brand campaigns from moving forward in a single week. The budget was there. The inventory was there. Yet the deal never closed.
The industry’s default diagnosis is that in-store media can’t prove its value in a way that’s actionable by brands. We set out to test that assumption. In-Store Marketplace (ISM), in partnership with Catalyst Media Consulting, took time to interview brand executives, agencies, and retail media leaders across the US and UK. We found that in-store media doesn’t have a measurement capability gap as many believe. But it does have a measurement alignment gap.
Brands, merchants, agencies and RMNs are each evaluating the same activation against a completely different definition of success, and that misalignment is what’s blocking investment at scale.
This is not a new tension. Attribution has been a recurring problem across every surface that commerce touches and pressure is only growing as more media environments become points of purchase. But in-store is where the cost of that misalignment is highest, and where the fix is most within reach.
Importantly, we are not arguing against attribution rigor or closed-loop measurement. Our argument is to use modern measurement practices in a fit-for-purpose way to reflect how different commerce environments influence purchase decisions.
Four scorecards, zero alignment
When we went into this research, we expected to find a measurement technology problem. What we found instead was an organisational one. Across every interview, the same activation was being judged against four entirely different definitions of success:
- The Media Mix Scorecard (agencies): How does in-store perform relative to other channels in the media plan?
- The Retail Sales Scorecard (merchants): Did the activation move product off the shelf?
- The Media Revenue Scorecard (RMNs): Did the brand get enough return to reinvest?
- The Efficiency Scorecard (brands/shopper marketing): Did it hit sales targets and improve the retailer relationship?
Even when an activation delivers on three of those four, the one misaligned stakeholder can stall the next buy.
Imagine a scenario where a brand’s media team insists on one-to-one attribution to meet their agency scorecard requirements. Meanwhile, a merchant in the same organisation is primarily concerned with whether pallets were moved. Although both objectives may have been met, the lack of a common framework for recognizing these achievements leaves neither party feeling victorious. Consequently, when the time comes for the next budget discussion, they find themselves starting from ground zero or recycling old plans.
The root cause is what we call “digital envy” – the assumption that in-store media must produce the same closed-loop, one-to-one attribution as e-commerce to be considered credible. That assumption has pushed the industry toward increasingly complex measurement frameworks that don’t reflect how physical retail actually works, and don’t answer the question that every stakeholder, regardless of scorecard, ultimately cares about: Did the product sell?
Solving this requires a common language before anything else.
Why digital thinking made it worse
The measurement alignment problem was shaped, in large part, by the assumption that in-store media should be held to the same standards as digital. RMNs built their in-store ad products on digital infrastructure, so digital KPIs followed. Closed-loop attribution became the default ask, not because it was the most accurate way to evaluate physical retail, but because it was the most familiar.
The result was complexity without clarity. Brands were handed measurement frameworks built for an environment where individual exposure can be tracked from impression to purchase. Physical retail is far more complex and forcing that model only produces more friction instead of the higher-quality data that stakeholders were hoping for. In many respects, digital media conditioned the industry to expect a level of precision that becomes much harder to sustain in physical environments – exposing the reality that marketing measurement has always been more directional than deterministic.
Recent work from IAB and Instacart similarly highlighted how traditional measurement methodologies can underrepresent the value of commerce environments that don’t behave like conventional digital media channels. In their white paper published earlier this month, they found that Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) systematically undercounts the impact of channels, like in-store, due to the more nuanced consumer behavior.
The industry has spent years adding measurement layers to in-store media in an effort to make it legible to digital buyers. What it actually needs is a framework built for the organizational realities of physical commerce.
Introducing shopper purchase rate
A possible solution to this challenge is called Shopper Purchase Rate, or SPR. Rather than asking whether an activation “worked” in aggregate, SPR measures product movement through the lens of who actually bought. It captures three dimensions in a single framework: dollars spent, units purchased, and shopper behavior across four segments (loyal, occasional, lapsed, and new).
That segmentation layer is what makes SPR meaningfully different from a flat ROAS figure. A category leader defending market share needs to know whether loyal buyers increased their spend. A challenger brand needs to know whether it converted new shoppers. SPR answers both questions from the same activation, using the same methodology, without requiring a separate measurement build for each objective.
The methodology itself is deliberately fit for purpose. SPR runs on matched-market tests and pre/post analyses. These are the same approaches that brands already trust for traditional in-store activations like end caps and promotional events. No cameras, no individual tracking, no privacy compliance burden. Every stakeholder in the room – merchant, brand, agency, and RMN – gets a number that speaks to their definition of success.
SPR also adapts to the CPG persona sitting across the table. An omni-channel planner prioritizing closed-loop iROAS gets a different application of the framework than an agency planner working from delivery logs and sales impact. The structure is consistent. The story it tells flexes to fit.
We are currently moving into a validation phase with retailers and CPGs across the second half of the year, and early results will inform how the framework evolves in practice. The full framework, including how SPR maps across CPG personas and integrates with existing retailer methodologies, is detailed in the report.
When merchants, brands, RMNs, and agencies can evaluate an activation through a shared framework, they move beyond debating attribution methodology and toward better shared business decisions. The future of in-store media will not be determined by who can produce the most complex measurement model. Rather, it will be shaped by those creating organizational confidence required to scale investment sustainably across the commerce ecosystem.
Authors
Paul Brenner is Senior Vice President of Retail Media and Partnerships at ISM.
Collin Colburn serves as Vice President, Commerce & Retail Media at IAB where he leads the Commerce Center of Excellence.
You are in: Home » Retail Media » GUEST COMMENT Perfect attribution is the enemy of in-store investment
GUEST COMMENT Perfect attribution is the enemy of in-store investment
Paul Skeldon
Paul Brenner and Collin Colburn explore how attribution methods need to reflect the different purchase locations to get a truer picture of what is driving sales on and off-line
Brands want to spend money on in-store media. Retailers want to sell them the inventory. And yet, budgets keep stalling.
Last year alone, one Retail Media Network (RMN) shared that organisational measurement requirements blocked five separate brand campaigns from moving forward in a single week. The budget was there. The inventory was there. Yet the deal never closed.
The industry’s default diagnosis is that in-store media can’t prove its value in a way that’s actionable by brands. We set out to test that assumption. In-Store Marketplace (ISM), in partnership with Catalyst Media Consulting, took time to interview brand executives, agencies, and retail media leaders across the US and UK. We found that in-store media doesn’t have a measurement capability gap as many believe. But it does have a measurement alignment gap.
Brands, merchants, agencies and RMNs are each evaluating the same activation against a completely different definition of success, and that misalignment is what’s blocking investment at scale.
This is not a new tension. Attribution has been a recurring problem across every surface that commerce touches and pressure is only growing as more media environments become points of purchase. But in-store is where the cost of that misalignment is highest, and where the fix is most within reach.
Importantly, we are not arguing against attribution rigor or closed-loop measurement. Our argument is to use modern measurement practices in a fit-for-purpose way to reflect how different commerce environments influence purchase decisions.
Four scorecards, zero alignment
When we went into this research, we expected to find a measurement technology problem. What we found instead was an organisational one. Across every interview, the same activation was being judged against four entirely different definitions of success:
Even when an activation delivers on three of those four, the one misaligned stakeholder can stall the next buy.
Imagine a scenario where a brand’s media team insists on one-to-one attribution to meet their agency scorecard requirements. Meanwhile, a merchant in the same organisation is primarily concerned with whether pallets were moved. Although both objectives may have been met, the lack of a common framework for recognizing these achievements leaves neither party feeling victorious. Consequently, when the time comes for the next budget discussion, they find themselves starting from ground zero or recycling old plans.
The root cause is what we call “digital envy” – the assumption that in-store media must produce the same closed-loop, one-to-one attribution as e-commerce to be considered credible. That assumption has pushed the industry toward increasingly complex measurement frameworks that don’t reflect how physical retail actually works, and don’t answer the question that every stakeholder, regardless of scorecard, ultimately cares about: Did the product sell?
Solving this requires a common language before anything else.
Why digital thinking made it worse
The measurement alignment problem was shaped, in large part, by the assumption that in-store media should be held to the same standards as digital. RMNs built their in-store ad products on digital infrastructure, so digital KPIs followed. Closed-loop attribution became the default ask, not because it was the most accurate way to evaluate physical retail, but because it was the most familiar.
The result was complexity without clarity. Brands were handed measurement frameworks built for an environment where individual exposure can be tracked from impression to purchase. Physical retail is far more complex and forcing that model only produces more friction instead of the higher-quality data that stakeholders were hoping for. In many respects, digital media conditioned the industry to expect a level of precision that becomes much harder to sustain in physical environments – exposing the reality that marketing measurement has always been more directional than deterministic.
Recent work from IAB and Instacart similarly highlighted how traditional measurement methodologies can underrepresent the value of commerce environments that don’t behave like conventional digital media channels. In their white paper published earlier this month, they found that Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) systematically undercounts the impact of channels, like in-store, due to the more nuanced consumer behavior.
The industry has spent years adding measurement layers to in-store media in an effort to make it legible to digital buyers. What it actually needs is a framework built for the organizational realities of physical commerce.
Introducing shopper purchase rate
A possible solution to this challenge is called Shopper Purchase Rate, or SPR. Rather than asking whether an activation “worked” in aggregate, SPR measures product movement through the lens of who actually bought. It captures three dimensions in a single framework: dollars spent, units purchased, and shopper behavior across four segments (loyal, occasional, lapsed, and new).
That segmentation layer is what makes SPR meaningfully different from a flat ROAS figure. A category leader defending market share needs to know whether loyal buyers increased their spend. A challenger brand needs to know whether it converted new shoppers. SPR answers both questions from the same activation, using the same methodology, without requiring a separate measurement build for each objective.
The methodology itself is deliberately fit for purpose. SPR runs on matched-market tests and pre/post analyses. These are the same approaches that brands already trust for traditional in-store activations like end caps and promotional events. No cameras, no individual tracking, no privacy compliance burden. Every stakeholder in the room – merchant, brand, agency, and RMN – gets a number that speaks to their definition of success.
SPR also adapts to the CPG persona sitting across the table. An omni-channel planner prioritizing closed-loop iROAS gets a different application of the framework than an agency planner working from delivery logs and sales impact. The structure is consistent. The story it tells flexes to fit.
We are currently moving into a validation phase with retailers and CPGs across the second half of the year, and early results will inform how the framework evolves in practice. The full framework, including how SPR maps across CPG personas and integrates with existing retailer methodologies, is detailed in the report.
When merchants, brands, RMNs, and agencies can evaluate an activation through a shared framework, they move beyond debating attribution methodology and toward better shared business decisions. The future of in-store media will not be determined by who can produce the most complex measurement model. Rather, it will be shaped by those creating organizational confidence required to scale investment sustainably across the commerce ecosystem.
Authors
Paul Brenner is Senior Vice President of Retail Media and Partnerships at ISM.
Collin Colburn serves as Vice President, Commerce & Retail Media at IAB where he leads the Commerce Center of Excellence.
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