Cotswolds Outdoor had an estate that brands wanted to be part of. 29 UK locations. Engaged, high-spending customers. A loyal audience across three retail brands, Cotswolds Outdoor, Snow & Rock, and Runners Need. What they didn’t have was the infrastructure to turn that asset into a coherent, revenue-generating in-store retail media network.
That’s the gap IUF was brought in to close. Eighteen months later, 149 digital displays are live across the estate, brand partners are running active campaigns in-store, and screened stores are reporting a +13% sales uplift. This is how it was built, and what it delivers.
The Problem With the Estate as It Was
The estate wasn’t broken. Individual screens were operating. But there was no unified architecture, no consistent content management system, and no commercial framework for activating brand partner inventory across the network.
When a retail estate grows organically, this is what happens. Screen decisions get made location by location. Infrastructure varies. Content ownership becomes unclear. And the commercial opportunity that sits inside high-footfall retail, the ability to sell media space to the brands already competing for shelf position, goes unrealised.
Cotswolds Outdoor understood this. The brief wasn’t to add more screens. It was to build a functioning retail media network: hardware, licensing, playback, content management, and commercial infrastructure working as a single system, managed reliably over the long term.
IUF was selected following a competitive tender. “We went through a robust tender process with IUF having come recommended,” said Lucy Sutton, Marketing Director at Cotswolds Outdoor. “We found the offering, expertise and support in delivering a cost-effective approach.”
How the Network Was Built
The project ran across three defined phases, each adding capability without disrupting trading.
Phase 1 onboarded 13 existing UK locations. Legacy infrastructure was aligned with Broadsign CMS, IUF Retail Media players were activated at each site, and centralised licence provisioning was established across the estate. The network had a spine.
Phase 2 expanded to 17 net-new UK sites, introduced additional display formats, and scaled the estate to 149 displays across all three brands. The format ecosystem was designed around how customers actually move through the store: 15.6″ touchscreen tablets for product discovery at fixture level; 37″ stretch displays embedded into shelving for contextual messaging; 43″ double-sided totems along store flow paths; 65″ and 75″ large-format screens for brand campaign content; and front-of-store LEDs at the point of entry.
The anchor of the estate is the Bluewater Shopping Centre installation, a 5,000 × 3,000mm LED that positions Cotswolds Outdoor’s retail media inventory at billboard scale, inside the store, in one of the UK’s busiest shopping environments.
Phase 3 activated the commercial layer. Retail media inventory across the estate is now available to brand partners through Zitcha, enabling targeted in-store campaigns against high-dwell, high-intent audiences. IUF owns the infrastructure. Cotswolds Outdoor retains full control of their own content creation and scheduling. The ownership model eliminates ambiguity about who is responsible for what, and keeps the network performing consistently across every site.
What the Network Delivers
The commercial outcomes are the point.
+13% sales uplift in screened stores is not an impressions figure. It is measurable retail performance, directly attributable to a retail media environment that is working. +30% share of category uplift recorded for brand partner campaigns demonstrates what in-store retail media delivers when the inventory, audience and operational model are in place.
102 of the 149 displays are actively supported by the retail media programme. The network is not a display estate with a commercial afterthought attached, it was designed from the outset to generate return, for Cotswolds Outdoor and for the brand partners investing in it.
The estate that previously had footfall and no commercial infrastructure now has a scalable media channel, operational clarity, and results that justify further investment.
From Estate to Media Channel.
Retail media works when the infrastructure is right. Not a collection of screens, but a network with consistent hardware, unified content management, defined ownership, and a commercial framework that activates the audience you already have.
Cotswolds Outdoor had the estate. IUF built the network. The results are operational.
If your store estate is ready to become a retail media network, the place to start is a conversation.
