If you've heard "retail media" thrown around as the next big thing in advertising, here's the plain version. Retail media is advertising sold by retailers across their own channels — their websites, their apps, and, increasingly, the screens inside their physical stores. That last part overlaps directly with digital out-of-home, which is why it matters here.
The simple definition
Retailers have something advertisers want: shoppers with intent, and first-party data about what those shoppers buy. Retail media networks let brands buy ad placements across a retailer's properties to reach those shoppers close to the moment of purchase.
It spans three surfaces:
- On-site — sponsored listings and banners on the retailer's website and app
- Off-site — the retailer's audience data used to target ads elsewhere
- In-store — digital screens on shelves, endcaps, and entrances
The in-store layer is the bridge to DOOH: those screens are real-world, digital, and bought much like other out-of-home inventory.
Why it's booming
Two forces are driving retail media's explosive growth:
- Purchase proximity. Reaching a shopper steps from the shelf — or on the page where they're buying — is as close to the decision as advertising gets.
- First-party data. As third-party cookies fade and privacy rules tighten, retailers' own purchase data becomes uniquely valuable for targeting and measurement.
The result is one of the fastest-growing categories in all of advertising, expanding well beyond e-commerce giants to grocers, drugstores, and specialty chains.
How in-store retail media connects to cross-screen
For most advertisers, the practical takeaway is that in-store screens are part of the same real-world-screen opportunity as street and venue DOOH — and they work best as one layer of a cross-screen campaign, not a silo.
Picture the journey: a shopper sees your brand on a neighborhood screen, again on their living-room TV, and once more on a screen inside the store as they decide. Each touch reinforces the last, right up to the shelf.
What it means for a smaller advertiser
You don't need to be a national CPG brand to benefit from the idea behind retail media: be present where purchase decisions happen. For a local business, that means the screens in and around the places your customers shop and move — exactly the in-venue and street-level DOOH you can buy programmatically today.
Glo's job is to make those premium screens self-serve — all screens unlocked, DOOH first, CTV also — so you can put one video in front of customers across the real world and the living room, from $29/day, no contract. To see how the channels fit together, start with what cross-screen advertising is.