Retailers like Kroger, CVS plan many more screens for in-store ads in 2026

While grocers have been some of the largest retailers to push for in-store media, chains in other categories have also started to install screens. Beginning this year, Best Buy will offer “takeover packages” to allow advertisers to appear throughout the in-store shopping experience, the company said in September.

Moving into the new year, many retailers have decided that in-store retail media will be a key area of focus for their advertising businesses and are planning to add more screens to reach more stores. That would mean a bigger audience for CPG brands and other advertisers who want to reach shoppers in person.

Still, there is a lot more work to do by grocers in convincing brands to make advertising investments in the growing space.

Bringing screens to stores nationwide

Some of the nation’s largest retailers are moving forward with ambitious in-store retail media expansion plans this year.

Christine Foster, svp of commercial strategy and operations at Kroger Precision Marketing Powered by 84.51˚ — Kroger’s retail media and data science arm — said the grocer’s program with Barrows is now beyond the pilot phase. She said the company is now committed to in-store media as an addition to Kroger stores.

Kroger plans to expand the program in 2026 to new markets nationwide, but it’s unclear yet how many stores. A Kroger spokesperson said the company expects to soon announce how many stores and markets it will roll out into in 2026, though Foster said they will be in a good portion of its stores.

“This is an opportunity for the in-store environment to be used as a brand-building channel,” Foster told Modern Retail. “The in-store media experience is not just for a kind of sales activation, so price and promo, but it’s also an opportunity to speak to what we would historically have considered the upper funnel of advertising.”

CVS Health is also working to grow its in-store retail media network at its CVS Pharmacy locations. The company said it installed almost 500 front entrance screens last year and equipped about 2,000 stores with screens in pharmacy waiting areas. It also said it has digital end-caps in more than 600 stores and in-store audio at 7,200 locations.

Parbinder Dhariwal, vp and gm at CVS Media Exchange, the retail media network for CVS Health, said in-store media has been part of the company’s strategy for the last two or three years.

In 2026, the company expects to have about 11,000 digital screens nationwide, with checkout ads on POS systems in about 7,000 stores. It plans to expand in-store audio buying options for advertisers with self-service and managed-service offerings and to increase the count of front-entrance screens from 500 to 1,000 this year.

CVS’s screens display messages about local flu outbreaks or allergies, followed by advertising from health, wellness or beauty brands. CVS has found through surveys that 54% of shoppers have said they find the screens useful, and 20% take an action after seeing them, according to Dhariwal.

The pharmacy waiting-area screens in particular are a big opportunity for CPG brands, Dhariwal said, because they can reach customers before they exit the pharmacy area and move back through the store.

“We communicate with our consumers in the digital channel, but we also need to ensure that we can capture mindshare when the consumers are coming into our store networks, whether they’re picking up a prescription or just transacting at the front of the store for their everyday needs,” Dhariwal said.

Regional grocers have also begun in-store media pilots, if not chain-wide launches. Marlow Nickell, founder and CEO of Grocery TV, an in-store media platform in more than 120 retailers in the U.S., totaling 6,500 stores, said regional grocers have been more willing to put screens into all their stores. Regional grocers, however, may not put screens all over their store at first and instead will pick a couple zones within the store before adding more, Nickell said. Those could be near the front of store, where screens reach a lot of shoppers, or near the pharmacy where retailers have a lot of messaging opportunities.

“That’s something we’ve always advocated for; you’re better off scaling zones within the stores than scaling parts of your network,” Nickell said. “When I see some of these pilots where maybe they only do, like, 5% or 10% of their chain, but they have a bunch of different screens, it’s hard for a brand to know what to do with that.”

How in-store media is evolving

Through pilot programs and early phases of in-store retail media programs, retailers have a better understanding of where they want to put screens in stores and where they don’t.

Kroger’s Foster said the company decided not to move forward with a screen along the back side of berry bunkers, or open refrigerators that customers reach down into to pull out their strawberries, raspberries or blueberries.

“There’s a low need for advertisers to be in that space, and also, it was distracting for customers,” she said, adding that the company wants customers to either not notice the screen or for the screens to add to their shopping experience. “We really want these screens to not feel like Times Square.”

The company has, however, moved forward with screens along end-caps, near the front of the stores and in the frozen section.

“We’ve focused on signage that is native to the environment within the store that can spotlight complementary products,” Foster said. “We’re partnering with merchandising and we’re partnering with store operations to ensure we understand the maximum impact this screen needs to have and the right spot to achieve that maximum impact.”

Getting brands on board

As retailers begin to scale these programs, they’ll also have to convince CPG companies and other brands that in-store advertising is a solid investment and reaches shoppers.

Paul Brenner, svp of retail media and partnerships for In-Store Marketplace — the in-store retail media division of audio equipment and screen vendor Mood Media — said he has 20 live RFPs from retailers for screen rollouts in 2026, some with thousands of screens per retailer. Brenner said his firm is often in discussions with retailers about investing in technology that provides a clearer view of what happened during a campaign.

“The folks that are investing in in-store are working a lot harder at folding the in-store digital measurement into their omnichannel measurement solution,” Brenner said.

Kevin Bridgewater, svp of strategic retail solutions for Quad, which has partnered with regional grocers Vallarta, Homeland and Save Mart for in-store media, said some CPGs have yet to see the level of scale they need to invest in ads on the screens. Some smaller brands, he said, don’t yet have budgets for in-store media, while larger CPGs may have test budgets or innovation budgets to play around in new spaces like in-store.

“We’ve got to educate the agencies on the power of testing some of this until scale is there,” Bridgewater said. “It’s like any new media channel; you’ve got to get scale to where the agencies can buy to the metrics that they’re looking for on behalf of their brand.”

Nickell said Grocery TV’s store count of 6,500 locations has started to persuade advertisers that in-store media can be impactful. But Nickell added that brands are still figuring out where in-store fits within their budget — whether it should be in their commerce budget, out-of-home, or elsewhere.

“Some brands that are more forward are starting to have actual line items in the budget for in-store media,” Nickell said. “They’re definitely having the conversations, brand by brand, to figure out where it lives, how it gets funded and which agency does it.”