Grocery TV has integrated Esri's Market Potential dataset into its in-store retail media platform, unlocking more than 3,500 behavioral and psychographic audience attributes across its network of 6,700-plus grocery stores. The partnership lets brands and agencies build custom store lists based on shopper behavior — a capability that has long existed in digital and TV buying but has been largely absent from in-store media planning.
The Planning Gap It Closes
In-store retail media has historically been sold on broad demographic or geographic proxies: age bands, income tiers, store trade areas. The Esri integration changes that calculus by tying location-level intelligence to specific shopper tendencies — whether a store's catchment over-indexes on shoppers prioritizing organic food, recently switching wireless carriers, or actively researching a vehicle purchase. Audience attributes span automotive, finance, health and wellness, telecom, and CPG, giving cross-category advertisers a single framework to plan in-store alongside their other media.
"In-store media is increasingly being viewed as an extension of video and digital strategies, not just an out-of-home buy," said Marlow Nickell, co-founder and CEO of Grocery TV. "The partnership with Esri enhances our ability to let media buyers approach in-store by audience, not just by placement. Most purchases still happen in physical stores, and reaching the right shopper at the point of decision is one of the most valuable moments in the funnel."
A Channel Reaching Scale
The timing reflects broader momentum in digital out-of-home. eMarketer raised its 2026 DOOH forecast by 18% to account for the growth of in-store media, and major retailers have been announcing investments in closed-loop attribution and audience segmentation — signals that in-store is moving from experimental budget line to performance-driven media channel.
Chris Nickola, director of commercial at Esri, framed the deal as a natural extension of location intelligence: "Partnering with Grocery TV brings that intelligence directly into the in-store media planning process, connecting behavioral and psychographic insights to the physical environments where most shoppers visit every week."
With 120-plus retail partners and a reach of 95 million unique shoppers, Grocery TV operates across independent and regional grocers nationwide. The scale matters for CPG brands in particular, which allocate significant trade and shopper marketing budgets against grocery as a channel. The ability to plan those investments against behavioral segments — rather than just store count or geography — aligns in-store spending more closely with how those same brands evaluate retail media network performance and digital shopper marketing strategy.
Audience-based targeting powered by Esri is available now to brands and agencies buying across the Grocery TV platform.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
