Wal-Mart has become the first US retailer to begin rolling out a new generation of in-store digital media technology that is going to become increasingly familiar to shoppers globally.
The biggest US retailer is starting to install a "smart network" that will replace traditional in-store televisions with screens that can be individually programmed depending on their location in the store.
The system will also be linked to checkout data at the stores to provide live analysis of the impact of the screen programming on sales - helping marketers who have long struggled with how to measure the effectiveness of in-store messaging accurately.
Wal-Mart describes the new system, which will eventually involve 27,000 screens at 2,700 stores, as a "shopper intelligent" network that will deliver relevant information "by store, by screen, by day, and by time-of-day."
The network will be operated by Wal-Mart's existing TV provider, Thomson's Premier Retail Networks.
But, rather than playing adverts and other material designed for TV, it will show customised programming developed by a new media company, Studio 2 , which will work with leading brands.
The tracking of the relationship between the screens and customer sales data is being provided by DS-IQ, a company launched five years ago by former executives and software engineers from Microsoft and Amazon.
Tom Opdycke, DS-IQ's chief executive, said he regarded the current drive to apply digital technology to in-store marketing as "the next big thing in retail", and a potential source of competitive advantage that could mirror the way retailers have focused on making their supply chains more efficient.
"If you are able to show more relevant content, the screens are not just a source of advertising revenue for the retailers, but they help drive the core business of sales forwards," he said.
Wal-Mart's programme was developed with $10m of funding from its main advertisers, and is part of a broad push in retail to develop ways of measuring the impact of in-store messages, such as "gaze-tracking" devices and surveillance cameras that track shoppers' movements.
Consumer goods companies are increasingly interested in attracting customers with brand messages that reach them as they shop, as traditional advertising on TV and in newspapers declines.
However, they have traditionally had a sometimes tense relationship with retailers over how much they contribute to in-store promotions, the impact of which is hard to assess.
Laura Davis-Taylor, of Retail Media Consulting, said the move towards measuring impact "was a great first step".
"There's always been this tenuous relationship be-tween the money that they're required to spend and the results . . . so it's very good for a proprietary technology to be able to provide more than just 'trust me'," she said.
Mr Opdycke at DS-IQ also argued that using point-of-sale data, rather than other surveillance techniques, avoided the privacy concerns that a retailer's customers might have over alternatives, such as camera-based tracking.
Wal-Mart will start deploying the new screens this month, with three broad categories. The first will be "welcome screens" at the entrance to the store, followed by "category screens" in departments such as grocery and electronics, and "endcap screens" at the end of aisles throughout the store.
It expects to have completed the roll-out by 2010.
Ms Davis-Taylor said that, in her opinion, *the new generation technology was "going to change the way we shop".
"This is the what we will see in the store of the future," she said.
