Cotswold Outdoor Group expands its retail media strategy into stores with Broadsign and IUF

Twelve weeks. That's how long Cotswold Outdoor Group, Broadsign and integrator IUF say it took to get the outdoor retailer's in-store advertising network from tender to live screens that were already earning money. The network presently includes 149 displays across 23 stores. The formats run from till and shelf screens to totems, large-format panels and front-of-store displays, and all of them are scheduled through Broadsign's CMS and Ad Server. The partners announced the build on October 6.

Lots of retailers have put screens in their stores. For anyone running a retail media network, the more useful detail is how these ones get sold. Through Broadsign's integration with Zitcha, Cotswold's retail media platform, brand partners and agencies can extend campaigns into the store. For operators, that suggests a brand could plan shop-floor screens in the same campaign as its onsite placements. The setup's first reported result is a 13% lift in units sold per store for a HOKA campaign. That's an encouraging number, and so far a lightly documented one.

One buying route for site and store

Each partner has a clear job. According to Broadsign's release, its platform handles content management and network health monitoring. On the commercial side, it schedules ads, automates yield and balances complex campaign rules to help Cotswold capture optimal revenue. IUF provides ongoing deployment and support. Zitcha, which Cotswold already used as its retail media platform, connects to Broadsign so brand partners and their agencies can carry a campaign from onsite and offsite placements into the store.

The release calls the result a unified workflow covering media planning, management and measurement, in store and across onsite and offsite channels. Measurement is the item in that list that matters most commercially. Without it, store screens can only be sold on reach, and a brand already buying digital placements has no common basis for comparing the two.

The digital signage title invidis spelled out what the Zitcha link means in practice. Advertisers can plan onsite, offsite and in-store inventory together, so the physical store doesn't have to be sold as a separate media channel. Frank Vallenga, Broadsign's vice president of platform sales for EMEA and SEA, said in the release that connecting audiences across a retailer's channels is a problem many retailers have yet to solve.

Cotswold's build is a concrete reference point for retail media leads whose store screens still sit on a separate order form, or aren't sold at all. Brands could reach the new inventory through a platform they were already buying on, with no new buying process to learn before the first campaign ran. That suggests the ad platform connection, more than the screen count, sets how quickly in-store inventory starts earning. The partners themselves put the speed down to the technical teams involved, and both readings can be true.

Scale is the other piece of context. Broadsign says more than 3 million static and digital signs run on its platform, on roadways and in airports, shopping malls, grocery and convenience stores, health clinics and transit systems. Next to that footprint, Cotswold's 149 screens are small. The retailer is plugging into software already running at volume rather than commissioning something bespoke. Marketing Report noted the infrastructure is meant to let Cotswold add in-store inventory while keeping a common operational framework, which is the practical payoff of building on a shared platform.

Reading HOKA's 13%

HOKA, ASICS and Nike are among the brands already running on the network. HOKA's campaign paired onsite ads with in-store placements and, Cotswold says, produced a 13% lift in units sold per store. The release presents that as evidence of the value of reaching shoppers at several touchpoints on the path to purchase. Marketing Report's Bob Koigi called it an early indication of what combining digital and physical placements can do. That's about the right weight to give it.

A photo in Broadsign's release shows what the in-store half looks like: a HOKA ad playing on a screen at a running-shoe display that also stocks ASICS, New Balance and other brands. The pitch to brands is right there. The screen reaches a shopper at the exact point where they are choosing between competing shoes, which no onsite banner can do.

Units sold per store measures sell-through. A footwear brand can check that kind of figure against its own sales data, which makes it more persuasive than an impression count. Two limits apply, though. The figure covers onsite and in-store media together, so it can't show what the screens added on their own. And invidis noted that the retailer gave no campaign period, control group or measurement method.

So the number doesn't prove that store screens drive sales by themselves. What it does show is narrower and still useful: the network can run a combined campaign and report a sales result at store level back to a brand. A budget holder at HOKA needs to see exactly that before booking a second flight.

Fewer brands, bigger stakes per screen

Speaking to Omni Talk at the Retail Technology Show in London in April, Cotswold Outdoor Group CEO Jamie Kristow described the business as a kind of department store for the outdoors, spanning hiking, running, snow sports and camping. Unlike a traditional department store, he said, its differentiator is knowledgeable people rather than endless assortment.

In fact, the assortment has been getting shorter. Kristow said the company cut its SKU count by roughly 35% while driving more volume into the products that mattered most. It identified strategic brands, doubled down on winning products and improved availability across stores and ecommerce. The result, in his telling, was growth in a relatively flat market.

He also described a test store near headquarters where the company tried out merchandising layouts, flexible fixtures, product adjacencies and where to place digital screens. According to Omni Talk, that sandbox delivered double-digit increases in conversion and average transaction value.

Kristow framed the in-store retail media network as solving two problems: helping customers get more relevant product information while shopping, and helping brand partners communicate their innovations in a physical environment. Omni Talk's write-up stressed that the objective was not simply monetization.

Taken together, the screen network looks like the next step in the same plan. If the screens exist partly so brand partners can show off their innovations in store, those brands are the likeliest buyers of screen time next to their own products. A tighter assortment built around strategic brands suggests a shorter, deeper advertiser list, where each supplier has more shelf space riding on how its products are presented. HOKA, ASICS and Nike fit that profile.

The network also suits a chain that has traded for 50 years on expertise. Cotswold's own site promotes in-store kit specialists and bookable fitting appointments. In a business where Kristow names knowledgeable staff as the differentiator, screens carrying product information could work as a layer alongside those specialists rather than a replacement for them, which is consistent with the customer-first framing he gave the network.

Programmatic waits for a bigger network

Nobody involved is calling the network finished. According to invidis, it was designed to support additional screens and stores. Mary Antieul, Cotswold Outdoor Group's head of commercial, said the retailer plans to build on the early results as it expands the network and explores programmatic opportunities. Vallenga said the system was designed so Cotswold's team can add, manage, control and monetize new screens and bring in programmatic trading later.

Broadsign also runs Place Exchange, which it describes as the largest independent supply-side platform for digital out-of-home. That would matter if Cotswold opens its screens to programmatic buyers, since the route to that demand would sit with the same company already running the ad server.

IUF chief executive Josh Bunce said the in-store channel is proving to be a point of difference when advertisers map out their budgets. Whether that holds is up to the brands. If HOKA, ASICS or Nike book repeat campaigns and Cotswold publishes a second result with its method attached, the 13% becomes a benchmark other specialty retailers can quote.