In-store retail media: IAB Europe drops "sales lift" from its standards

On 17 September 2026, IAB Europe opened the second version of its "In-Store Retail Media Definitions and Measurement Standards" for public comment. The industry has until 23 October to respond. The text covers screens and ad placements at the point of sale, from the store entrance to the aisle.

It could pass for one more technical document. It contains, however, a decision worth pausing on: the removal of "sales lift" and "brand sales lift" metrics.

What the text proposes

According to IAB Europe's own summary, V2 rests on a few simple choices:

• a five-zone framework to locate placements, from outside the store to the aisle;
• a simplified "Opportunity To See" model based on six inputs: footfall, store count, campaign duration, number of placements, aisle penetration and share of voice;
• impressions based on footfall and the possibility of seeing the screen, not on playout alone;
• a tiered approach to aisle penetration, acknowledging that retailers do not all have the same measurement capabilities;
• a sales reporting window aligned to 28 days;
• and the removal of sales lift metrics.

Why this removal is good news

IAB Europe does not detail its reasons in the announcement, and we will not put words in its mouth. This is simply our reading.

An exposure standard and an effect standard do not answer the same question. The first says how many people had the opportunity to see a message. It can be standardised with counters, shared assumptions and a common model. The second says what the campaign changed. It cannot be standardised with a formula: it depends on a protocol.

Displaying a "lift" in a dashboard without stating how the comparison group was built means publishing a number nobody can verify. In store, the difficulty is real. Shoppers who walk past an end-cap screen are not the same as those who do not: they visit more often, already buy the category, shop in larger stores. Comparing their purchases with everyone else's mostly measures that starting difference.

Removing lift from an exposure standard acknowledges that not everything fits under the same word. That is more honest than keeping it in a form everyone would compute differently.

What exposure does not tell you

An Opportunity To See remains an opportunity. Six well-chosen inputs give an estimate that is comparable across networks, which is real progress for buying. They do not say whether the message was noticed, remembered, or whether it shifted brand perception.

For that, you need to compare exposed people with people who were not exposed, all else being equal. That is the principle of a Brand Lift study: an exposed group, a comparable control group, the same questions asked to both, and a difference read with its 95% confidence interval. If the interval contains zero, no conclusion is drawn. In store, building that control group is harder than in digital: matched test and control stores, or alternating periods. It is feasible, but it is decided before the campaign, not after.

Three questions to ask your retail media network

1. Are reported impressions based on measured footfall or on an assumption, and which one?

2. When an effect on sales or on the brand is reported, how was the comparison group built?

3. Does the difference come with a confidence interval and a sample size?

Takeaway

The consultation is open until 23 October 2026. Whatever the final version, the signal is useful: counting opportunities to see and measuring an effect are two different jobs. Standards are progressing on the first. The second remains a matter of protocol, and it is better to know that before reading a lift figure.

Source : https://iabeurope.eu/in-store-retail-media-measurement-proposals-open-for-public-comment/