Published, November 11, 2025
Retail is fighting with changed consumer habits and falling margins as consequence of competition with new channels. It has been stated several times that “boring retail is dead”, but recent developments show that technology driven retail has a promising future. In-store is the new battle ground for increased revenue streams and technology the enabler to make it happen.
“We have come to a point where we for the first time are closing in on real-time data availability in stationary retail compared to online channels”, explains Iman Nahvi, CEO and Co-Founder of Advertima. The customer journey online can be tracked, and conversion rates for this channel have been defined for a long time. Retail and in-store brands have fallen short on these metrics and relied largely on the power of TV advertising, outdoor campaigns and historic checkout and demographic data. But 2025 will see a major shift when it is projected that spendings for retail media will for the first time surpass the media purchase for TV in the US. Screens in-store are not only used for generating additional revenues through brokers but larger chains like Walmart take also control of this channel and lead the way to a high margin revenue stream.
“A massive change is going on”, adds Iman Nahvi. “But with all changes it needs time and some frontrunners to show the way. Hence, we believe our approach of using real-time data at the point of decision will be a new standard in how to optimize media spends, support customer satisfaction and increase in-store-revenues”, Nahvi explains.
“Additionally, we have shown in recent customer projects that our real-time based technology compared with loop-based bookings has resulted in substantial customer relevance and sales uplifts”, Nahvi continues. But the entire eco-system needs to work together to make it happen.
“There are several hurdles to surpass before we can realize to land a successful project”, Nahvi explains. “On the one hand, there are still fragmented tech stacks on the customer side, so that there can be delays in decision-making processes before all the consequences have been analyzed. Secondly, some interested parties are still worried about how the data will be handled, and we are constantly reiterating our privacy-by-design principle. Finally, there is a lack of standardization of measurements. As a result, validity and comparability suffer, and we to make sure that we measure and compare correctly”, Nahvi concludes.
The bottom line, however, remains the same as stated in the recent retail media in-store report for 2025 by Colin Lewis and published by the DOOH company Broadsign: “As digital inventory becomes saturated and competition intensifies, it is time to connect digital and in-store touchpoints to influence shoppers at the exact moment of decision.”
In-store is the next growth frontier for retail but you need access to screens and technology to make it happen. The magic term of omnichannel integration becomes a new meaning when handling of real time data in-store makes it now possible to connect the online consumer journey with in-store behavior. Campaign measurements can stretch across both universes and provide new insights both in the lower and upper sales funnel triggering new commercial models. The boundaries are moving fast and Advertima is a leading player stretching limits and offering innovative marketing solutions at the point-of-decision.
“We are just at the beginning. The doubts that we see today will have disappeared during the next two years and sensorics based retail media will be the new gold standard for efficient in-store promotional activities”, Iman Nahvi concludes.
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The Advertima technology
The Advertima Player is half the size of a standard digital signage player and comes with sustainable minimal power consumption. It is powerful enough to run the Audience AI while hosting a full digital signage CMS.
The player recognizes and digitizes 100+ in-store shoppers and transforms them into addressable retail media target groups in real time. It runs privacy-by-design algorithms and deletes all personal or identifiable data within milliseconds right at the edge.
Everything in 3D beyond 30 meters is detected, e.g. room position, head posture, body posture – and at the same time enables multi-3D zoning. The data predicts anonymous audience attributes for each individual buyer (100+ at a time) in the sensor’s field of view, enabling real-time segmentation and targeting in <100ms.
At the same time, the software notifies the in-store monetization ecosystem of segmented audiences for the next available digital signage spot: from CMS to ad servers and ad orchestration layers to SSPs and DSPs, a holistic approach.
