Marketing News:
Grocery titan, Kroger, is transforming its traditional refrigeration units into smart advertising platforms, enhancing 500 of its locations across the nation with digital, context-aware advertising and product details, all displayed on IoT-powered screens that also offer a view of the products inside.
This large-scale change follows a fruitful three-year experimental alliance with Cooler Screens, the creators of the smart screens now seeing more extensive use.
As the largest supermarket chain in the US, boasting a remarkable 2,800-plus stores under various retail banners, Kroger is not alone in embracing this innovative form of in-store advertising.
Cooler Screens’ network is already making significant strides, reaching over 90 million consumers each month across several retail outlets, and is forecasted to reach an impressive 200 million plus by the dawn of 2024, as the company has claimed.
Providing the platform for these digital adverts and merchandise information is Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform IoT Edge runtime. This also facilitates the interaction with and management of the Edge devices found within each cooler door. The use of data and analytic solutions, including Microsoft Power BI data visualization software and Azure Synapse analytics, is instrumental in evaluating the impact of digital merchandising and advertising, as reported by Chain Store Age.
But it’s not only advertising revenue and brand sponsorship that appeal to retailers. The smart screens present additional benefits, such as facilitating the monitoring of inventory, and have been reported by some users to result in sales uplift in the same store due to the ease of locating sale items through on-door promotions.
Cara Pratt, senior vice president at Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM), expressed enthusiasm about the ongoing partnership, stating it “extends our vision for the future of retail media, offering brands another influential marketing tool inside the store.”
This year, the Path to Purchase Institute’s survey of brand managers recognized KPM as the leading retail media network in terms of audience and measurement capabilities.
