There has been a steady drumbeat of in-store retail media investments by major retailers in recent years.

Kroger, for instance, signed a deal with Cooler Screens (a company that turns refrigerated doors into interactive advertising displays) for 500 stores in May 2023. Regional grocer HyVee closed a deal with Samsung to introduce 10,000 screens over its footprint of stores across aisles, deli, meat, and seafood counters. Over the last few years, these in-store retail media investments have begun to happen in a much more concrete way.

So Retail Brew sat down with Andrew Lipsman, independent analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, to talk about the evolution of in-store retail media and why it should matter to CPGs.

Keep reading here.—VC

When it says Gucci but looks sketchy, or says Dior but looks dicey, it could be a fake, and the number of products failing authentication tests in the US is on the rise.

The rate of products that were “unidentified,” industry parlance for not passing muster with authenticators, rose to 8.8% in 2023, up from 7.2% in 2022, an increase of 20%.

Better news for Uncle Sam’s neighbors to the north and south for the same years, with Canada seeing the rates of products deemed fake fall from 6.3% to 5.2%, and Mexico from 7.6% to 6.3%.

That’s according to “State of the Fake,” the annual report from Entrupy, the New York-based AI authentication solutions company.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Ingka Group, which owns the majority of Ikea’s franchise locations, said its annual sales declined 5% in fiscal year 2024, even as price cuts helped boost store traffic and online orders.

The company invested more than $2.0 billion in lowering the prices on thousands of products across its markets, which it said helped drive a 3.3% increase in store visits, a 28% increase in online visits, and a 9% jump in online orders.

Keep reading here.—AV