In-store retail media measurement, not off-site inventory, is likely to become the decisive retail media battleground of the second half of 2026. Three signals from the last month point the same way: Kroger’s move to acquire Giant Eagle is being framed around advertising data rather than store count, a cluster of grocery and drug retailers launched in-store measurement tools in June, and Target quietly elevated its retail media leadership into the revenue C-suite. Taken together, the pattern suggests at least one more top-tier US grocery or drug retailer will announce a material in-store measurement capability or a data-scale consolidation move before Q4 2026 earnings calls wrap in November, and that in-store incrementality will shift from pilot to standard sales pitch across the largest US networks by year-end.
In short
- The prediction: in-store retail media measurement, not off-site expansion, is likely to be the defining retail media story of H2 2026, with at least one more top-tier US grocer or drug retailer announcing a material in-store measurement capability or data-scale deal before Q4 earnings wrap in November.
- Signal 1: Kroger’s roughly $1.65bn agreement to acquire Giant Eagle, announced on 1 July, is being read primarily as a play for loyalty, pharmacy, and purchase data that feeds Kroger Precision Marketing, not as a conventional store-count expansion.
- Signal 2: a June cluster of in-store and closed-loop measurement launches, including Albertsons Media Collective’s in-store incrementality tool and CVS Media Exchange’s AI-driven CorIQ platform, suggests measurement is where the category is now competing.
- Signal 3: Target made Matt Drzewicki the permanent head of Roundel on 1 June after a five-month interim, while former Roundel lead Sarah Travis was promoted to a chief digital and revenue role, a sign the P&L now sits near the top of the house.
- The catch: advertisers are trimming the number of retail media partners they fund, and the Kroger deal could draw antitrust scrutiny, either of which could slow the build-out rather than accelerate it.
Why this matters now
Retail media has spent three years being described as the third wave of digital advertising, sitting behind search and social. Most of that commentary has focused on on-site search ads and, more recently, the off-site push into the open web and connected TV. The quieter story is that the on-site search shelf is close to saturated, and the next unit of growth has to come from somewhere with more inventory and better proof of outcome.
In-store is that frontier. Physical shelves, screens, and self-checkout displays reach the roughly 80% of US retail spending that still happens in a store, yet they have historically been the hardest surface to measure. For most of the category’s life, brands bought in-store placements on faith. That is the gap the last month of activity is trying to close.
The reason to pay attention now, rather than in six months, is that measurement is a capability that compounds. A network that can prove in-store lift wins budget that a rival cannot. That dynamic tends to produce clustering: once one or two operators demonstrate credible closed-loop measurement, competitors are forced to match it or cede the pitch. For a primer on how these networks fit together, our explainer on retail media networks across Amazon, Walmart, and beyond sets the baseline.
The economic backdrop sharpens the point. Retail media is one of the few double-digit growth lines left in an otherwise mature retail and advertising landscape, and it carries advertising-grade margins that dwarf the low single digits a grocer earns on selling food. That gap is why a supermarket board will spend management attention and capital on an ad business that is a rounding error on total revenue but a disproportionate share of operating profit.
What has been missing is a way to extend that profitable growth beyond the on-site search box before it saturates. In-store is the largest untapped surface, but it has resisted monetization precisely because it could not be measured to the standard brands now expect online. The last month suggests the operators have decided to solve measurement first and let inventory follow, which is the opposite of how the on-site business was built.
Signal 1: Kroger’s Giant Eagle deal is a data play, not a store grab
On 1 July, Kroger announced an agreement to acquire Giant Eagle for approximately $1.65bn. Giant Eagle generates around $9bn in annual revenue and operates across Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, and Indiana. On its face this is a regional grocery tuck-in, deliberately smaller than the Albertsons merger that regulators blocked.
The framing in the trade coverage, however, was almost entirely about advertising. The analysis around the deal stressed loyalty relationships, pharmacy data, and purchase histories flowing into Kroger’s ecosystem, strengthening Kroger Precision Marketing rather than simply adding stores. The through-line was blunt: in commerce media, scale compounds value, because more households create stronger audience models and better in-store targeting.
That is a meaningful reframe. When a grocer justifies an acquisition by the quality of the first-party data it unlocks, the retail media unit has moved from a bolt-on to a strategic rationale for M&A. We flagged an early version of this shift when US grocers began relaunching loyalty programs, a move we argued pointed to a retail-media data grab rather than a points refresh.
The contrast with the failed Albertsons merger is instructive. That deal was defended largely on cost synergies and competitive scale against Walmart, and it collapsed under antitrust pressure. The Giant Eagle transaction is smaller, more regional, and justified in a different currency: households, loyalty depth, and the audience models that data supports. The rationale has migrated from the grocery P&L to the media P&L.
Giant Eagle also brings a mature loyalty franchise of its own, including a fuel-rewards program that generates rich, high-frequency purchase signals. Folded into Kroger Precision Marketing, that data does not just add households, it thickens the behavioral profile of households Kroger already reaches, which is what improves targeting and, in turn, measurable lift. Density of signal, not raw store count, is the asset being bought.
The signal is not that one deal closed. It is that the strategic vocabulary of grocery M&A now runs through advertising data. That vocabulary rarely appears once. It tends to recur across a cohort of operators looking at the same math.
Signal 2: a June cluster of in-store and closed-loop measurement launches
Within a few weeks in June, several of the largest US retail media networks shipped measurement product rather than new ad inventory. Albertsons Media Collective launched an incrementality measurement capability aimed specifically at proving the true media impact of in-store campaigns, alongside onsite measurement work. Separately, Albertsons and NBCUniversal introduced connected TV closed-loop measurement that ties premium video exposure to retail sales through a clean room.
CVS Media Exchange leaned into the same theme, detailing CorIQ, an AI-driven platform built on its front-store and ExtraCare loyalty data to support faster planning, optimization, and closed-loop measurement across channels. The common thread across these launches is that they are not about selling more impressions. They are about proving that impressions already sold produced a sale.
Three independent measurement launches from three different operators inside one month is the kind of pattern that rarely reflects coincidence. It usually reflects a shared read of where budgets are heading, and a shared fear of being the network that cannot prove outcomes. The following table maps the signals against what each one implies.
| Signal | Approx. date | Source category | What it implies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kroger to acquire Giant Eagle (~$1.65bn) | 1 July 2026 | M&A rationale | First-party data scale is now a stated reason to buy a grocer |
| Albertsons in-store incrementality measurement | June 2026 | Product launch | In-store lift is being made provable, not assumed |
| Albertsons and NBCUniversal CTV closed-loop | June 2026 | Partnership | Video exposure is being tied to store sales via clean rooms |
| CVS Media Exchange CorIQ platform detail | June 2026 | Product launch | Loyalty data is being wired into AI-driven measurement |
| Target elevates Roundel leadership | 1 June 2026 | Executive move | Retail media P&L now sits near the revenue C-suite |
Read as a set, these are not five stories. They are one story about measurement told five ways. The connective tissue is closed-loop proof, and the surface where proof has been weakest is the physical store. Our analysis of how connected TV ads for retailers actually pay off covers why the measurement layer, not the inventory, is usually the constraint.
Signal 3: retail media just got a C-suite promotion at Target
On 1 June, Target named Matt Drzewicki the permanent senior vice president leading Roundel, the company’s retail media network. Drzewicki had run Roundel on an interim basis since January, following the promotion of the group’s former SVP, Sarah Travis, into an enterprise chief digital and revenue role. He joined Roundel in 2022 after more than a decade at Google.
Two details matter more than the name. First, the interim period lasted roughly five months, which suggests a deliberate search rather than a reflexive backfill. Second, the person Drzewicki succeeded moved up rather than out, into a role that explicitly pairs digital and revenue. When a retail media leader is promoted into the revenue C-suite, the signal is that the advertising business is being treated as a core profit engine, not a marketing curiosity.
Executive moves are the earliest and noisiest of the three signal types used here, so they deserve caution. A single appointment proves little. What gives this one weight is its alignment with the other two signals: a data-scale acquisition and a wave of measurement launches, all in the same window, all pointing at the same conclusion.
Leadership stability at the top of a retail media unit tends to precede product ambition. A permanent SVP with a mandate, and a promoted predecessor in the revenue seat, is the kind of setup that produces a measurement or in-store announcement within a quarter or two, not years.
The pattern of promoting retail media leaders into enterprise revenue roles is itself worth tracking as a leading indicator across the sector. When the person who built the ad business moves into a seat that owns digital and revenue for the whole company, the ad playbook tends to spread into merchandising, loyalty, and store operations. That is the organizational route by which an on-site advertising idea becomes an in-store one, because the same executive now has authority over the physical estate.
Read against Signal 1 and Signal 2, the Target move rounds out a coherent picture. One company is buying the data, several are proving the outcomes, and at least one is restructuring its leadership so that the ad business can reach into the store. None of those moves alone would justify a forecast. Together they describe an industry reorganizing around a single capability.
What the pattern suggests
Line the three signals up and the shared logic is hard to miss. Kroger is buying data scale, Albertsons and CVS are proving outcomes, and Target is putting a senior, permanent leader on the P&L. Each is a different move on the same board, and the board is in-store measurement.
The prediction that follows is specific and falsifiable. The pattern suggests at least one more top-tier US grocery or drug retailer, beyond Kroger, Albertsons, CVS, and Target, will announce a material in-store retail media measurement capability or a data-scale consolidation move before Q4 2026 earnings calls conclude in November. A future observer can check that in ninety to a hundred and eighty days.
There is a second, softer claim attached. In-store incrementality measurement is likely to move from pilot language to standard pitch language across the largest US networks by year-end. When Albertsons and CVS both lead with proof of in-store lift, rivals that still sell in-store on impressions alone will struggle to hold budget through the 2026 holiday cycle.
The prior precedent worth watching is the off-site sequence. When Walmart Connect opened Vizio inventory and stitched together demand-side platform routes, competitors followed within quarters rather than years. The same clustering dynamic is the base case for in-store measurement.
It is worth being precise about why three signals of different types carry more weight than three of the same type. An acquisition, a set of product launches, and an executive promotion are drawn from independent decision processes inside different companies. When independent processes converge on the same conclusion within a single month, the odds that the convergence is noise fall sharply. That is the analytical basis for treating this as a pattern rather than a coincidence.
The counter to that logic is that all three companies are reading the same trade press and copying one another, so the convergence is fashion, not fundamentals. That is possible, but fashion in enterprise software and M&A tends to be expensive and slow, and boards do not approve billion-dollar deals to follow a trend. The likelier reading is that each operator ran its own numbers on where retail media growth comes from next and arrived at in-store measurement independently.
| Scenario | What it would look like by November 2026 | Rough likelihood |
|---|---|---|
| Base case | At least one more top-tier US network ships in-store measurement or a data-scale deal; incrementality becomes standard pitch language | Most likely |
| Bull case | Multiple networks ship in-store measurement, a measurement standard gains real adoption, and in-store becomes a disclosed growth line on earnings calls | Plausible |
| Bear case | Budget consolidation and antitrust friction stall new launches; in-store stays a pilot story into 2027 | Less likely but real |
Wider context: the off-site land grab meets the in-store frontier
The in-store measurement push does not replace the off-site story. It complements it. Over the past year the loudest retail media narrative has been the move off-site, into the open web, streaming, and social, where retailer audiences can be reached at scale. We argued that retail media’s next land grab moves off-site before the 2026 peak, and that thesis still holds.
What has changed is that off-site and in-store are converging on the same requirement: closed-loop measurement. A connected TV impression is only worth a premium if it can be tied to a basket, and an in-store screen is only worth a premium if the same is true. The Albertsons and NBCUniversal clean-room work is off-site inventory measured with in-store outcomes, which is exactly the seam where the two frontiers meet.
That convergence is why the shoppable video buyers and the in-store measurement builders are increasingly the same teams. We expect the retailers most aggressive on in-store proof to also be the ones leaning into shoppable formats, a link we drew when arguing that another US retailer will buy into shoppable CTV before Q3 earnings.
There is also a defensive logic at work. As advertisers gain tools to compare networks head to head, the cost of being unmeasured rises: a network that cannot prove lift is not merely growing slower, it is actively losing budget to rivals that can. In that environment, measurement stops being a nice-to-have differentiator and becomes table stakes, which is exactly the condition that forces a whole cohort to invest at once.
The wider dynamic is that retailers are no longer competing only for consumer spending. They are competing for advertising budgets, and advertising margins are far richer than grocery margins. That single fact explains why a supermarket group will justify a billion-dollar acquisition on the strength of its loyalty data, and why measurement, the least glamorous part of the stack, is where the fight has moved.
Implications for retailers, brands, and platforms
For retailers, the read is that in-store media is no longer a defensive checkbox. A credible in-store measurement story is becoming a condition of holding brand budgets, particularly for grocers and drug chains with dense store footprints and deep loyalty data. Operators without a measurement roadmap risk being the network that gets cut when advertisers consolidate partners.
For brands and agencies, the practical takeaway is to demand incrementality, not impressions. The June launches mean the tools now exist to ask for proof of in-store lift, and the networks that cannot provide it are worth less. Expect trade desks to reweight spend toward whichever grocer or drug chain can demonstrate closed-loop outcomes first.
For platforms and ad-tech vendors, the opportunity is the measurement plumbing itself: clean rooms, identity resolution, and the AI layer that turns loyalty data into audiences. The CVS CorIQ approach, building measurement on top of front-store and loyalty data, is a template competitors will license or replicate rather than build from scratch.
For investors, the signal to track is disclosure. The clearest confirmation of this thesis would be a top-tier US retailer breaking out in-store or retail media measurement as a distinct growth driver on a Q4 earnings call. That would move the story from trade-press pilots to reported financials.
There is a longer-dated implication for how these businesses are valued. Retail media units are increasingly discussed as high-margin segments that could justify a re-rating of the parent, and measurement is the credibility layer that makes such a re-rating defensible. An advertising line that brands can independently verify is worth a higher multiple than one that rests on impression counts, because it is harder to discount as inflated. Measurement, in that sense, is not just a sales tool but a valuation argument.
| Stakeholder | Near-term action | What to watch by year-end |
|---|---|---|
| Grocers and drug retailers | Ship or partner on in-store incrementality measurement | Whether a rival announces a matching capability |
| Brands and agencies | Demand proof of in-store lift before renewing budgets | Which networks can and cannot deliver closed-loop data |
| Ad-tech and platforms | Sell clean-room and identity plumbing | Consolidation of measurement vendors |
| Investors | Track retail media disclosure quality | In-store media as a named line on earnings calls |
Caveats: what could go wrong
The most important counter-signal is budget consolidation. Coverage of the Albertsons and NBCUniversal work noted that advertisers are trimming the number of retail media partners they fund, precisely because measurement finally lets them compare networks. If money concentrates into two or three winners, the losers may retrench rather than invest, and the wave of new in-store launches could thin rather than broaden.
The second caveat is regulatory. Kroger’s prior attempt to merge with Albertsons was blocked, and the Giant Eagle deal, while smaller, still concentrates grocery and pharmacy data in one operator. If antitrust review slows or reshapes the transaction, the data-scale thesis loses its clearest recent example, and the acquisition-as-advertising logic looks less repeatable.
A third risk is measurement fragmentation. In-store measurement standards exist, but adoption is uneven, and every network marking its own homework undermines the credibility the category is trying to build. Without shared definitions, incrementality claims can become a marketing arms race rather than a trusted currency, which would push the payoff into 2027.
Finally, the macro backdrop could intervene. If consumer spending softens into the holidays, brands may cut experimental in-store media before proven search inventory, delaying the shift regardless of how good the measurement gets. The prediction here is directional and timed, not guaranteed, and each of these counter-signals is a genuine way it could miss.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is the prediction and by when?
The core prediction is that in-store retail media measurement, rather than off-site inventory, is likely to be the defining retail media story of H2 2026. Concretely, at least one more top-tier US grocery or drug retailer beyond Kroger, Albertsons, CVS, and Target is expected to announce a material in-store measurement capability or a data-scale consolidation move before Q4 2026 earnings calls wrap in November.
Why in-store rather than the off-site push everyone is talking about?
Off-site remains real and important, but the two frontiers are converging on the same requirement of closed-loop measurement. In-store is where measurement has historically been weakest and where the untapped inventory is largest, since most retail spending still happens in physical stores. That combination makes in-store the higher-leverage battleground for the next few quarters.
Is the Kroger and Giant Eagle deal really about advertising?
Not exclusively, but the strategic framing leans that way. The trade analysis around the roughly $1.65bn deal emphasized loyalty, pharmacy, and purchase data feeding Kroger Precision Marketing, and argued that in commerce media, scale compounds value. Buying a regional grocer partly to strengthen an advertising business is the reframe that makes this a signal rather than a routine tuck-in.
What is in-store incrementality measurement?
Incrementality measurement tries to isolate the additional sales that an ad caused, rather than sales that would have happened anyway. In an in-store context, that means connecting exposure to a screen, display, or placement with a measurable lift in purchases through loyalty and transaction data. It is harder than online measurement, which is why the June launches focused on it.
Could this prediction simply be wrong?
Yes, and there are concrete ways it could miss. Advertisers are consolidating retail media partners, which could shrink rather than grow the field of networks investing in measurement. The Kroger deal could face antitrust friction, and measurement standards could stay fragmented. Any of these would push the payoff into 2027 or blunt it entirely.
How would I know if the prediction came true?
Watch for a top-tier US grocer or drug retailer announcing an in-store measurement product or a data-driven acquisition between now and November 2026, and listen for in-store or retail media measurement being named as a growth driver on Q4 earnings calls. If neither happens, the thesis has failed its own test.
Which companies are best positioned if this plays out?
Operators with dense store footprints and deep loyalty data are best placed, which points to the large grocers and drug chains already investing here. Ad-tech vendors that supply clean rooms and identity resolution also benefit, since the measurement plumbing is the scarce capability. Networks without a measurement roadmap are the most exposed.
Does the IAB in-store standard change anything?
The industry did finalize in-store retail media definitions and measurement standards, which gives operators a shared vocabulary to build against. Adoption remains uneven, so the standard is an enabler rather than a guarantee. You can review the framework on the IAB in-store retail media guidelines page.
How does this connect to shoppable CTV?
Closely. The clean-room work linking connected TV exposure to store sales is the same measurement problem viewed from the video side, and the teams building in-store proof often overlap with those buying shoppable formats. That is why we expect the most aggressive in-store measurement builders to also be early shoppable CTV buyers.