Blog.
An introduction to store media

There’s much more to retail media than just ecommerce. When brands and agencies step into the world of grocery-based media, they gain access to an array of channels that can help them engage with shoppers online, in-store, and beyond. What are those channels, though? How do they work, and what benefits do they bring?

In this series, store media experts Ellen Alexander, Odile Tran and Connor Chappell provide an overview of the key advertising opportunities at play in the retail media space today – specifically those available via the Tesco Media & Insight Platform.

From banners to trolley ads, for as long as we’ve had grocery stores, we’ve also had store media. Today, thanks to significant advances in data science and technology, store media is no longer the untargeted, linear medium that it once was. Instead, it’s a nuanced and measurable channel, one in which activities can be deeply tailored in order to reach different audiences and meet specific marketing objectives.

Within the Tesco Media & Insight Platform, all store media falls under the umbrella of “Connected Store”. The focus here is on an integrated approach to store media, ensuring that brands and agencies can deliver messages consistently across multiple touchpoints and reach customers as they journey throughout the Tesco store network. For brands, a simpler way of looking at this is the ‘prime, prompt, purchase’ model:

• Prime customers with your brand message at the front-of-store

• Prompt customers out-of-aisle to trial your product in your brand’s tone of voice

• Drive purchase by encouraging customers to choose your brand at fixture

Connected Store brings together five different media products that range from traditional printed assets through to innovative digital tools. Let’s take a look at each – from what it is to how it works.

Point-of-Sale

Just as the name suggests, Point-of-Sale allows brands to run ads in high-impact areas – typically alongside products at the shelf. One of the key advantages of Point-of-Sale is that it allows brands to communicate the benefits of the featured SKU at the exact point at which many shoppers are making up their mind about what to buy.

At Tesco, multiple Point-of-Sale applications are available. These include:

• Banner Dividers – hanging banners that stand out from the shelf.
• Shelf Talkers – printed strips attached to the shelf edge.
• Recipe Pads – brand-sponsored tear-off recipe cards.

Digital Out of Home at Tesco

Digital Out of Home at Tesco (DOOH) are 72-inch, portrait-style digital screens placed at the front of Tesco Extra and Superstores. Ads run via these screens can be either 5- or 10-seconds long, and the displays are capable of showing both static and fully animated content as needed.

DOOH screens are now in place at over 500 Tesco stores (covering 62% of Superstores and Extra), reaching an audience of 6m shoppers every fortnight. The DOOH network has been developed in partnership with JCDecaux, one of the world’s leading out-of-home advertising companies.

Connected Display

Bringing the digital screen experience in-store, Connected Display gives brands the ability to deliver visual and eye-catching campaigns in close proximity to their products. Connected Display uses networks of smaller digital screens positioned in a range of high visibility locations, and serves as a great way to bring Above the Line campaigns into the store.

As with DOOH, advertisers can deliver dynamic, engaging branded content that can be used to fulfil a wide variety of marketing objectives. Connected Display is now available in more than 150 Tesco stores across the UK & Ireland.

In-store Radio

Whereas Point-of-Sale and DOOH prioritise visual communications, In-store Radio focuses on ambient content that helps to highlight your products to customers wherever they happen to be. Combining music with 30-second bursts of ad content, In-store Radio can be used to raise awareness, highlight incentives or promotions, and extend the impact of your Connected Store activities.

In-store Radio is currently available in 2,000 stores, covering 90% of the Tesco main estate.

Scan as you Shop

Available exclusively to Tesco Clubcard holders, Scan as you Shop handsets allow customers to scan items as they add them to their baskets, and then pay for them at a dedicated checkout. From an advertising perspective, that presents an opportunity to reach more than 2m customers with targeted and attention-grabbing messages, with brands able to display ads on handsets in close to 200 stores when this launches in summer 2023.

Scan as you Shop supports two placement formats:

• Splash Ads – covering the whole of the screen when a device is unlocked.
• Basket Banners – rotating ads that refresh every minute.

As well as helping brands to reach customers in an environment where 85% of all Tesco UK sales take place, insights provided by Clubcard data ensure that campaigns can be specifically targeted around the shoppers and stores likely to deliver the greatest impact in terms of Return on Advertising Spend.

In the next post in this series, we’ll look at the area of onsite media.