Sephora now generates 30 percent of its total revenue from retail media -- from selling advertising access to its shoppers, not from selling products. That number gets cited often in retail media conversations, usually as evidence of how large the opportunity is. What gets cited less often is the mechanism that made it possible: measurement. Sephora did not build a nine-figure media business by selling brands on intuition about in-store traffic. They built it by giving brand partners data.

That data is the bottleneck for every other retailer trying to do the same thing. In 2024, U.S. retail media networks generated $140 billion in advertising revenue, growing to a projected $166 billion in 2025. The leaders are Amazon, Walmart, and Target -- all of whom built their initial media businesses on online advertising, where measurement infrastructure already existed: impressions, viewability, click-through rates, multi-touch attribution. Moving that model into the physical store is where it gets complicated.

84 percent of U.S. retail sales happen in brick-and-mortar locations, according to Forrester's 2024 data. Yet according to eMarketer's 2025 analysis, over 99 percent of retail media advertising remains online. The physical store -- where the overwhelming majority of purchasing actually happens -- is capturing almost none of the brand advertising investment that retail media has unlocked. The reason is not that brands do not want to reach in-store shoppers. The reason is that they cannot yet prove the ads worked.

The Measurement Gap That Keeps Brand Budgets Online

Online advertising gives buyers two decades of measurement infrastructure. You know exactly how many people saw an ad, for how long, whether they were in view, and what happened afterward. That precision is why digital ad budgets are large and growing -- not because digital audiences are more valuable, but because digital performance is more legible.

In-store screens cannot currently offer this. A brand buys a slot near your checkout queue. You tell them it is a high-traffic location. You cannot tell them how many people actually faced the screen, what the average attention duration was, or whether sales of the advertised product lifted in that location during the campaign window. The IAB acknowledged this explicitly in December 2025, releasing a new in-store measurement framework and noting that 'adoption has been slow due to operational complexity and inconsistent standards.' A March 2025 Koddi survey found that 1 in 4 media buyers cited difficulty accessing in-store reach as a top challenge -- not lack of interest, difficulty with the product they would be buying.

"Brands are not avoiding in-store media because they don't want the audience. They're avoiding it because they can't verify what they bought. The IAB released its first in-store measurement framework in December 2025. That gap is closing." -- IAB In-Store Media Framework, 2025 / Koddi, March 2025

The gap between in-store's share of sales (84 percent) and its share of ad spend (under 1 percent) is not a preference gap -- it is a measurement gap. Close the measurement gap, and the money follows. eMarketer is already forecasting in-store retail media ad spending to grow 47 percent in 2025, with in-store digital screen spending projected to surpass $580 billion by 2026 in the U.S. That growth is being driven by retailers who are beginning to offer brand partners actual impression data, not just location descriptions.

Computer vision closes this gap. The same AI that tracks customer zone traffic can measure screen viewership: how many people were within sightline, how many faced the screen, average attention duration, and audience composition by hour -- all without capturing personally identifiable data. That measurement layer transforms a screen placement into a verifiable media product. It lets you report a campaign result rather than a campaign run.

Whale's SpaceSight provides in-store screen measurement at the campaign level, integrated with Whale's Lume platform for content management and distribution. Retailers using this combination can run targeted campaigns, track real viewership, and deliver post-campaign reports to brand partners with the same rigor as a digital buy. The retailers who build this measurement capability now are the ones who will capture the brand budgets that have nowhere credible to go in-store yet -- but are looking.

See how Whale powers in-store retail media measurement

Referenced in this article:

Modern Retail -- Retail Media Networks in 2025: modernretail.co/marketing/with-every-company-entering-the-ad-business-heres-what-to-expect-from-retail-media-networks-in-2025/

Fugo.ai -- Retail Media Growth Statistics and Trends 2026: fugo.ai/blog/retail-media-growth-statistics-trends/

Osmos.ai -- In-Store Retail Media 2026: osmos.ai/blog/retail-instore-media-digital-screens-2026

eMarketer via Marketing LTB -- Retail Media Networks Statistics 2025: marketingltb.com/blog/statistics/retail-media-networks-statistics/

Nielsen -- The Future of Retail Media 2025: nielsen.com/insights/2025/future-retail-media/

CSP Daily News -- New In-Store Retail Media Measurement Approaches: cspdailynews.com/technologyservices/new-store-retail-media-measurement-approaches-are-emerging

Forrester via Chain Store Age -- Physical Stores 84% of U.S. Retail Sales 2024: chainstoreage.com/forrester-physical-stores-account-72-us-retail-sales-2024