The Maze: Grocery advertising has a timing argument, not just a checkout argument. In a four-week in-store digital campaign presented by retail-media analyst Andrew Lipsman, 41% of the eventual audience arrived in week one and 69% by week two. Retail media means advertising sold around a retailer's shoppers; here, the channel is physical-store screens. The Venvee example shows how quickly a campaign can build its own audience. It does not show that screens reach 69% of all shoppers, or outperform television.
Two weeks delivered most of the audience. Cumulative unique reach rose from 0% before the campaign to 41%, 69%, 89% and 100% across its four weeks. By halfway through, more than two-thirds of eventual reach was already booked. The second half added the remaining 31 percentage points. That timing matters for a launch with a narrow window: a large audience built too late can miss the commercial moment. The campaign example supports asking when shoppers first encounter an ad, rather than judging a screen network only by its total month-end audience. An impressive total can hide a slow start.
The last week adds fewer new people. Subtracting each cumulative value from the next gives weekly additions of 41, 28, 20 and 11 percentage points of eventual reach. These are calculated audience shares, not weekly impression counts. Impressions count exposures; unique reach counts people reached at least once. A shopper can see the same message repeatedly without increasing unique reach. The declining additions therefore make duration a planning question: later weeks may add people, reinforce a message, or do both. This evidence does not separate those effects, and it provides no sales result with which to price them.
The TV analogy is about distribution, not identical performance. Lipsman's accessible article describes grocery screens as a way to reinforce television messages and reach audiences that television misses. That is a useful strategic distinction. A screen beside a shopping trip can provide another encounter with a brand; it cannot automatically deliver the same storytelling as a 30-second TV spot. For advertisers, the test is whether early store exposure adds useful reach alongside other channels. For retailers, the product to sell is a measured audience-building service, not simply a collection of screens with electricity attached.
One campaign is evidence for a test, not a universal forecast. The reach figures are based on a per-store average, and the example does not disclose the campaign category, store sample, geography, fieldwork dates or deduplication method. Its final 100% is the campaign's own endpoint, not full market coverage. A separate January 2024 shopper-age comparison in the original exhibit uses another denominator and should not be blended into the reach series. Buyers should ask for their own week-by-week unique audience, exposure frequency and overlap with other media before importing these percentages into a budget. A neat curve is not a media guarantee.
Why it matters: Store-screen networks can make a stronger case when they show how fast an audience builds, rather than selling a large exposure total alone. The practical move is to test launch timing against weekly unique reach, then examine whether later exposure adds new people or useful repetition. Keep sales measurement separate: these reach percentages cannot prove incremental revenue. The commercial opportunity is credible; the rate card still needs evidence from the campaign being bought.
Images: Cover AI-generated
