In-store media measurement: performance is what matters

March 3, 2009 by Dave Haynes

Nikki Baird of Retail Systems Research, which does guess what, moderated a panel at DSE last week on in-store measurement.

Back at the office now, she has generated an interesting think piece on the company’s Website, comparing measurement for online retail and the new challenge of measuring in-store media.

Her conclusion was that in order to start really getting some traction we need to not only understand what happens when people see and hopefully engage with screens in store, but why that happened.

At DSE, we came to the conclusion that performance is ultimately what matters – because how can you really justify digital in-store media on anything else, given the context of being at the shelf – at the point of decision? But in order to understand the levers that move response, we must make that “deep” effort to understand the why behind the buy. And therefore, the two models must live together. We’ve got to try harder and dig deeper – without both context and triggers AND influencers and profiles, we’re really just shooting in the dark.