Albertsons Tackles In-Store Retail Media’s Core Challenge
At IAB ALM 2026, Brian Monahan of Albertsons Media Collective laid out a direct answer to a long-standing industry question: how do you prove that in-store retail media causes incremental sales rather than just correlating with them? Albertsons has moved beyond attribution models that infer exposure from purchase timing and is running disciplined experiments that isolate true incremental impact.
A New Standard for In-Store Measurement
Technology and Methodology
Albertsons combines store-level holdout groups, randomized testing and low-energy RFID beacon technology to measure exposure and movement anonymously. Stores are assigned to test or holdout cohorts so campaign lift can be read as causal, not associative. RFID beacons capture proximity and dwell patterns without collecting personal identifiers, and exposure signals are linked to aggregated sales and loyalty-driven transaction data to compute incremental lift.
That experimental design lets Albertsons answer the hard question: did the creative, placement or timing create new demand, or simply shift existing buyers? The retailer uses longitudinal windows to measure both immediate sales and downstream effects such as repeat purchases and lifetime value.
Beyond Transactions: Driving Strategic Growth
Stores as Discovery Hubs
Albertsons frames physical stores as environments for discovery, not just last-click conversion. In-store media can introduce shoppers to new brands and categories; by measuring new-to-category growth, the Collective can show value that goes beyond short-term ROAS.
Collective Growth and Shared Accountability
The Collective growth model pairs measurement with commercial terms that share risk and reward between retailer and brand. Campaigns that demonstrably drive category expansion are treated differently from those that only reallocate market share. Programs like the Alby Awards signal this strategic shift toward partnership and accountability.
The Future is Physical: Why This Matters
Solving physical store measurement requires investment in sensors, disciplined experimentation and privacy-first data governance. The payoff is a retail media network that acts as a true demand platform: validated incrementality, measurable lifetime impact and more strategic brand-retailer partnerships. For retail media executives and advertisers, Albertsons’ approach offers a practical path to turn in-store activity into defensible business outcomes.
