The term ‘retail media’ has been the hottest phrase in marketing for the past two or three years. Conferences are being built around it. Consultancies are rebranding to chase it. Budgets are shifting in its direction. And yet, when we look at what retail media actually involves, installing and managing digital display networks in physical retail environments to help brands reach shoppers at the point of purchase, we realise something: we’ve been doing this for over 20 years.
Before Retail Media Had a Name, We Were Building the Infrastructure
IUF started building in-store digital infrastructure long before any industry association coined the phrase ‘retail media network.’ We were designing, installing, and managing the hardware behind dynamic retail displays in the Frasers Group estate, across Sports Direct, Flannels and more, when most of the marketing world was still debating whether digital signage was ‘worth it.’ The trial and error happened on our watch. The technical challenges got solved quietly, over years of real deployment across hundreds of sites.
What 20 Years of Learning Actually Looks Like
It means we know what breaks. We know which hardware configurations last and which fail under retail conditions, the heat, the dust, the 16-hour trading days. We know how content management systems need to be structured to work for a retailer managing 170 sites with different brand partners, different local campaigns, and different promotional calendars. We know how to deploy at scale without disruption to trading. And more importantly, we know what actually drives results.
The Frasers Group Estate
One of the best illustrations of what two decades of experience looks like in practice is our work with Frasers Group. Across more than 170 sites, IUF has built and manages the digital display infrastructure that powers retail media for the brands sold within those stores. Brands pay to advertise on those screens, on Frasers Group’s behalf, reaching millions of shoppers in some of the UK’s most visited retail destinations. Because IUF manages the entire technology layer, the whole system works reliably at a scale that took years to build.
Why This Matters Now
As retail media becomes mainstream, the market will increasingly separate into two types of infrastructure partner: those who’ve been building this for years, and those who’ve recently decided it’s a good idea.
The difference isn’t just experience. It’s in the quality of deployments, the reliability of networks, the depth of measurement data, and the ability to handle the complexity of real retail environments at scale. We’re in the first group. And we have 20 years of evidence to show for it.
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