In a world-first innovation, global marketing group Dentsu will bring together its own platform’s original data – derived from comprehensive global surveys – and new eye tracking research conducted by industry-leading attention specialists Lumen Research on behalf of the Co-op Media Network, focusing on the convenience store marketplace.
Findings from the research challenge conventional wisdom about in-store media’s effectiveness. For instance, the data reveals that smaller stores provide over twice the opportunity to see certain products, three times the attention and quadruple the brand recall compared to larger counterparts.
Users of dentsu’s planning tool will now be able to quantify the volume of attention generated by different in-store advertising formats, ensuring more strategic investment decisions.
New Digital Age spoke to Katie Hartley, Managing Director – Product and Innovation at Dentsu and Dean Harris, Head of Co-op Media Network to find out more about the new alliance…
What’s the motivation behind the new alliance?
Katie Hartley (KH): Retail media is rapidly evolving into one of the most influential advertising channels. Historically, it has been viewed as tactical rather than strategic, but this research and integration proves otherwise. We’re proud to collaborate with Co-op Media Network and Lumen to bring this game-changing data to market – reshaping how brands approach in-store advertising, both in the UK and globally.
Dean Harris (DH): By bringing Co-op’s in-store attention data into Dentsu’s planning tool, convenience media now sits alongside mainstream channels in the planning process. It’s no longer a bolt-on or an afterthought – it’s right where it belongs. Dentsu’s planners now have a high-attention channel they can use to strengthen client campaigns.
Why is making the distinction between convenience stores and larger supermarkets so important?
DH: When we launched last January, our mantra was ‘convenience retail is different’, but the reality is, in retail media, convenience hasn’t been treated differently. So we’ve had to create a separate market. Supermarkets and convenience stores may sell the same products, but they operate in fundamentally different worlds, and that means the media opportunities are different too.
We had two core hypotheses. Firstly, that convenience retailers share their shoppers with the big supermarkets – they’re the ‘in-between’ shop. So even if someone doesn’t buy the advertised product in our store, they might go and buy it later at Tesco or Sainsbury’s. Working with Circana, we proved that advertising in convenience stores drives a 3% uplift in overall market sales, which quadruples the attributable sales impact for a campaign. That’s a massive result.
Our second hypothesis was about attention. Convenience stores are more compact, categories share aisles, and shoppers are often in a rush, without a list. That means ads aren’t just seen more, they actually help people navigate and make decisions. With Lumen’s eye-tracking tech, we found that ads in convenience stores get double the visibility, triple the attention, and quadruple the brand recall versus supermarkets.
KH: At Dentsu, we’ve been focused on the attention economy since 2018. We started by integrating attention data into our planning tools—initially powered by surveys. But over time, we enhanced that with observed data through partnerships with leaders like Lumen. That’s been a game-changer in giving us a more accurate, nuanced picture.
Co-op was one of the first to partner with us in this space. They even did the first ever programmatic attention trade with us back in 2019. This latest study takes it to another level. Not only do we now have norms for convenience vs. supermarket environments, but we can also understand how cumulative exposures affect attention and impact.
What Co-op has provided is attention data with depth – volume and value. It’s not just ‘how many seconds someone looked at something,’ but ‘what did that attention actually achieve?’ That’s the kind of insight our planners need to make smarter, more effective decisions.
Have you been surprised at the rapid development of retail media as an advertising tool?
DH: Search advertising took 14 years to grow from $1 billion to $30 billion. Social took 11 years. Retail media did it in five. Why? Because it’s familiar. Buyers and sellers already knew each other. The audience was already there. And crucially, retail media solves two big advertiser problems: fragmented reach and the need for deterministic, closed-loop data. From the retailer side, especially in low-margin grocery, this is a no-brainer. The infrastructure already exists—you’re just monetizing what’s already there. The margins are better, and the growth is real.
This alliance is a big leap forward for retail media. For the first time, we’re not just reporting on sales through our own tills, we’re breaking down the walled gardens. And by integrating this attention data into mainstream agency planning tools, retail media is no longer a side-of-desk job for media planners. It becomes part of the core process.
The beauty of this attention data is that it’s not just good for Co-op. It’s convenience data—it can be applied globally. So whether you’re a 7-Eleven in the U.S. or an OXXO store in Mexico, this insight is relevant. And Dentsu is the first agency to take that global leap.
