By Dom Dunne, Commercial Director, Programmatic & LaunchPAD Europe, Bauer Media Outdoor
Retail media, a rapidly growing and increasingly important channel for advertisers, is moving into the physical world. It’s a channel that’s expected to reach 16% of global ad spend in 2026, totalling $196.7 billion (approximately £146 billion), making it one of the fastest-growing ad channels. It offers rich first-party data, measurable outcomes and proximity to conversion. This transforms retail environments from mere places to shop into full-scale media ecosystems.
As retail media grows and evolves, attention is increasingly turning to the potential of real-world touchpoints like in-store displays, storefront screens, and nearby digital Out of Home (DOOH) sites. All these venues let advertisers reach consumers even closer to the moment of purchase. Meanwhile, programmatic Out of Home (prOOH) is emerging as a natural extension of the retail media ecosystem: one that allows brands to activate in-store and near-store screens with the same data-led precision as digital retail media.
By linking exposure to footfall, category uplift and transaction-level insights, retail-linked prOOH can now deliver measurable performance while also driving brand impact. Here’s why its integration into retail media strategies is essential for brands in 2026.
The retail media opportunity
The growth of retail media reflects a wider industry shift toward media environments that demonstrate measurable commercial outcomes.
Unlike many traditional digital channels, retail media provides access to valuable first-party shopper data based on real purchasing behaviour rather than inferred interests. This unlocks powerful opportunities for brands to target shoppers in a crucial moment of decision-making, backed by substantive insights about their buying habits.
By tying ad exposure to actual sales, the fabled ‘closed-loop measurement’ retail media offers an attractive level of accountability to marketers under pressure to prove return on investment (ROI). It’s increasingly a core pillar of media strategy, influencing how brands plan across the entire funnel.
At the same time, prOOH enables dynamic, data-led activation in prime physical locations. Campaigns can adapt to factors such as location, time of day, audience behaviour, and retail demand signals. As retail media evolves into a channel encompassing both online and offline touchpoints, prOOH allows brands to extend the data-driven precision of digital retail media into the physical world.
Retail media and programmatic Out of Home: a recipe for full-funnel effectiveness
Recent research indicates that real-world familiarity contributes to a meaningful uplift in conversion metrics. Online sales are 106% higher within a store’s catchment area, and 48% of consumers agree that offline media channels help to build trust for online purchases.
Brands can use prOOH to tap into this by deploying campaigns around specific store locations or retail environments. This ensures messaging appears where relevant shoppers are most likely to be present.
The power of prOOH campaigns lies in their ability to respond to physical conditions, such as climate, weather, or the time of day. This allows brands to align with key consumer moments, like craving a hot breakfast on a cold day or needing a snack during a work break.
With so many of the micro-moments that shape consumers’ decisions taking place away from the digital sphere, OOH allows brands to be present as they happen, and crucially in a form that is highly relevant while also building familiarity.
Our research finds that 61% of consumers agree that in-person experiences trigger them to search for or purchase something online, reinforcing the vital role of offline influences in shaping digital behaviour and transactions.
These moments are also becoming measurable. By combining location, mobility, and retail data, retail-linked prOOH can quantify campaign impact on consumer behaviour, using metrics like store visits, footfall uplift, and category demand to demonstrate outcomes.
The growing overlap between OOH and retail media, combined with the potential for relevance and measurability that OOH offers, should lead advertisers to rethink how these channels can work together rather than treating them as separate parts of the media mix.
The next age of retail media
The added visibility, and in some cases transaction-level insights, that prOOH can offer is enabling it to evolve beyond an awareness channel into a pivotal component of performance-driven media strategies.
As retail media networks continue to grow, their influence is increasingly extending beyond retailer-owned digital platforms into physical stores and surrounding areas. By integrating prOOH into retail media strategies, brands can reinforce messaging across multiple touchpoints. This also helps connect digital commerce data with real-world audience engagement.
Continued advances in data integration, programmatic buying, and measurement will only make it easier for advertisers to activate campaigns closer to the moment of purchase and demonstrate strong ROI as they do so.
The convergence of tech and brands 