Bob McDonald, chief operating officer, Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, also expects changes in how marketers approach in-store media. “By taking this data and aligning it against the cost of specific physical in-store executions, we are going to be able to establish CPM — the cost per thousand — to reach those shoppers in a particular category and by store,” he said. “You are even going to be able to establish ROI by geography — what works better in Florida than in Illinois — or even ROI by seasonality.”

SUPERVALU STUDY

Besides Nielsen In-Store, other efforts have been made to determine the efficacy of in-store signs. Minneapolis-based Supervalu, for example, has worked with DS-IQ, Bellevue, Wash., an independent in-store media assessment firm, to evaluate the effect of digital screens installed at more than 1,000 stores in its Albertsons division. The screens in perishables sections are managed by CBS Outernet, and checkout screens are managed by PRN.

The In-Store Marketing Institute reported in June on a digital screen campaign Supervalu ran for eight weeks in 746 stores during the fourth quarter of last year. The report said sales of a featured product increased by a small amount, but “the family of brands grew even more [6.8% lift],” and the “whole category went up 11 times what the single product went up,” said CBS Outernet's Weidauer, then director of brand advertising for Supervalu.

Weidauer also said that two 15-second ads on the screens were more effective than one 30-second ad, according to the report. Weidauer told SN that the studies also showed minimal sales cannibalization and indicated that a lot of shoppers stayed loyal to a category after the promotion was over. Supervalu was able to see those patterns because it leveraged loyalty card data that identified groups of shoppers based on their spending habits. Supervalu declined to comment.

Meijer, Grand Rapids, Mich., has installed digital screens from NewSight Media Solutions, New York, in 101 stores, with plans to have them in all 182 stores by the end of the first quarter, said NewSight's Montgomery. About 20 screens are in each store, in two-thirds of checkout lanes, plus one in pharmacy and four to five in perimeter and Center Store departments.

NewSight also works with DS-IQ to “match up [screen] play logs with POS data,” said Montgomery. “We tell the advertiser how much incremental sales they got as a result of the screen ad.” As in most digital screen scenarios, the retailer typically pays no fees and receives a cut of the ad revenue for allowing NewSight to place its screens in stores.

Hoyt of the In-Store Marketing Institute observed that marketers may wish to use a hybrid metric for in-store campaigns that combines standard measures of audience impressions with sales lift — an opportunity that doesn't exist with broadcast TV. “Retail is closer to the sale, so it's about impressions and sales,” he said.

As part of the PRISM project, retailers and marketers have access to “closure rates” — the percentage of shoppers who not only visited a category but purchased a product from its shelves.