Case Study: Leading Retail Store boosts in-store media value with Mu Sigma

Retail Stores Emerge as The Top Advertising Medium

Leading Retail Store partnered with Mu Sigma to prove that retail stores could be measured and valued as a brand advertising medium, not just a place for sales. The challenge was to create a fair way to compare in-store displays with digital media by estimating reach, impressions, and cost-efficiency across major retail locations.

Mu Sigma developed an impression-estimation approach using household panel data, store traffic inputs, seasonality, trip patterns, and shopper path modeling to quantify gross impressions for in-store ads at retailers like Walmart and Target. The solution gave the customer a measurable way to evaluate in-store media, helped establish retail stores as a viable advertising channel, and showed strong impact: store ads achieved about 1/10th the CPM of a typical digital ad in four weeks and about 1/15th in six weeks.