In-Store Marketplace Launches, Offering Integrated Retail Media Platform

An open initiative uniting multiple media service providers has hit the market to provide a single point of integration for any retail media platform and expand access to digital audio and display inventory. The In-Store Marketplace (ISM) platform includes Vibenomics, Mood Media, Sellr Technologies, FuelMedia TV, WaterStation Technology and other agencies.

Created as a “centralized ecosystem,” the In-Store Marketplace platform aims to help in-store media publishers more effectively manage campaigns through the ISM Ad-Server and ISM portal, offering oversight of retail media pricing, yield management and reporting on buying activity. Publishers who work retailers can integrate ISM directly into their respective retail media platforms. Providers, such as Citrus Ad, will be able to expand their unified offering to include in-store without integrating contrasting in-store media systems.

“The definition of retail media is broadening,” said Brent Oakley, Vibenomics CEO, in a news release. “Multi- and omni-channel shopping journeys already expose customers to a wide variety of visual and audio, print and digital, and experiential communication via in-store merchandise displays. Key to the continuation and evolution of that journey is the existence of a marketplace that provides easily accessible common inventory for in-store media and ad-serving tech.”

Retail media originated as an e-commerce-only platform leveraged by retailers to advertise and promote products online but has grown into a more wide-ranging and omnichannel tool in recent years. And based on a slew of research, retail media networks are not slowing down.  

According to recent proprietary research from the Path to Purchase Institute, over half of marketing, advertising and branding leaders say their organization’s investment for retailer media networks has increased from last year, particularly among those with annual revenues exceeding $500 million. eMarketer also projects that U.S. retail media spend has grown to over $41 billion and now represents 17.2% of the total U.S. digital ad spend.

Additionally, evolving definitions of what retail media is have become inclusive of other digital in-store media, such as video displays and digital-out-of-home and audio advertising solutions. As part of ISM, Mood Media, for example, will provide marketers coverage of audio and display advertising across 330,000 of its affiliate locations and retailers through a single point of integration for in-store media.

“The In-Store Marketplace allows buyers to bundle display inventory and digital audio into a single [private marketplace (PMP)] or cherry-pick your options — whatever approach fits your current needs,” said Chelsea Monaco, vice president, eRetail & commerce Media, at Merkle, said in the release. “Consolidating the big shopper media partners ... facilitates more frictionless engagement with partners and ubiquitous access to the inventory. These benefits were a major takeaway from our research last year and I imagine they’ll surface again when we repeat our study this year.”