The Challenge
Sensodyne wanted to reach consumers with the right message at the right time at the point of sales. For its first-ever digital out-of-home campaign, the oral healthcare brand set out to test how different in-store Retail Media delivery approaches influence audience relevance and incremental sales.
Promoted by Publicis Media and Precision Media as well as Majid Al Futtaim’s dedicated retail media network, the assignment was clear: target the right shopper audiences with the right message at exactly the right moment inside Carrefour stores. Beyond awareness, the goal was to prove incremental sales uplift at the point of purchase by linking exposure to sales outcomes.
To validate impact fairly, the campaign was designed as a multi-layer A/B test across four distinct ad delivery methods, each applied to a separate balanced store group:
- Direct booking – loop-based delivery (mass exposure)
- Direct booking – real-time audience targeting
- Programmatic – non-targeted delivery (mass exposure)
- Programmatic – real-time audience targeting
This setup enabled a clear comparison between mass targeting and audience-based real-time delivery, across both direct and programmatic buying routes.
The Solution
Publicis Middle East and Majid Al Futtaim’s Precision Media powered a Global First in real-time audience targeting capability. A targeted campaign was run across 23 Carrefour stores in the UAE, utilizing four delivery and targeting approaches to isolate performance differences across formats and buying methods.
Each store group used only one method to avoid store bias, and all approaches were run concurrently to eliminate timing bias. Creative and budget levels were kept consistent to ensure a fair comparison of effectiveness.
“Our partners used our in-store Audience Intelligence, converting real-world shopper presence into digital audience data at the point of purchase. This allowed programmatic systems to deliver in-store ads with the same precision as online environments. With our technology, every shopper in front of a screen becomes an addressable audience in real-time”, comments Iman Nahvi, Co-Founder and CEO of Advertima.
The setup was completed with Grassfish’s digital signage CMS for content delivery and Adtrac’s real-time campaign orchestration layer. These components, connected through Place Exchange and The Neuron DSP, enabled Publicis to activate, optimize, and measure audience-based Sensodyne campaigns in real-time.
The study combined real-time audience segmentation, automated programmatic ad delivery, and in-store transaction data to measure the sales uplift.
Privacy by Design
“The achieved results speak for themselves”, Nahvi comments, and highlights also the data privacy of the study: “our software has deleted the technology’s ability to store images. Pictures with people are considered personal data and are not stored. We fulfill legal requirements by extracting anonymized metadata directly from the images on the Edge AI player in the store. After that, the images are deleted immediately and irrevocably. All this happens within 70-100 milliseconds. We don’t even have direct access to the images because they simply don’t exist. AI-powered recognition technology is privacy by design”, Nahvi concludes.
This ensured that real-time targeting and measurement delivered performance without compromising data protection requirements.
The Result
With real-time audience targeting enabled on Precision Media’s in-store screens, Sensodyne achieved a 68% sales uplift in 20 days, proving that audience-based targeting in-store drives stronger commercial outcomes than standard loop-based advertising.
Across the full activation, the campaign delivered 13.9 million impressions in 23 Carrefour hypermarkets, confirming that in-store Retail Media can operate with both scale and measurable precision.
Beyond sales uplift, the activation established a new benchmark for retail media globally: in-store environments can now match online performance principles through dynamic targeting, verified impressions, and measurable impact at scale.
Aneela Halani, Marketing Manager at Sensodyne @ Haleon, said:
“As marketers, our goal is always to reach people with the right message at the right time. With a global-first programmatic digital out-of-home campaign, we took a big step toward that vision with our Sensodyne Clinical White campaign – using AI and programmatic technology to tailor what consumers see on the screen in real time, making every interaction more relevant and impactful.”
Dr. Günther Helm, Chief Executive Officer at Majid Al Futtaim Retail, said:
“This activation marks a defining moment for retail media globally. For the first time, Majid Al Futtaim’s Precision Media AI-powered in-store screens at Carrefour UAE are not only delivering unparalleled reach but also measurable precision at scale. By bringing together data, technology, and shopper insight, we are transforming in-store media into a true performance channel – where every impression counts, every connection drives impact, and every brand can measure real results.”
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