The In-Store Retail Media Screens That Out-Earned Walmart.com

The rise, death, and return of in-store retail media as lived by Mike Hiatt.Around 2010, the in-store retail media screens inside Walmart's stores were bringing in more revenue than Walmart.com. By 2015 the network was gone. Mike Hiatt, Founder & President of Dynamic Retailing, built it. He came to Bentonville to take over Walmart TV, which at the time meant 27-inch screens bolted up in the rafters playing audio that fought with Walmart Radio and lost. He rebuilt it as the Smart Network: eye-level screens, category channels, and five media endcaps that sold out every time they went to market. At its peak it had the reach of a Super Bowl each week. It was a retail media network before the industry coined the phrase. Then it came apart. Marketing owned the network, merchants owned the space, and nobody had built a way to cut the merchants in. Walmart pulled it out around 2015. Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden get Mike to walk through what really happened, why in-store retail media is working now when it stalled then, and what his book Timing the Desert says about being right too early. Ricardo spent that same era at Hughes delivering managed digital signage to retailers, so this one gets personal and specific fast.This is a story of what was, what could have been, and the lessons every retail media network leader today should learn from the original in-store media network.In This Episode, You'll Learn·       Why a retail media network inside Walmart's stores out-earned Walmart.com and still got deinstalled·       How the fight over trade funds, national ad dollars, and shopper marketing budgets stalled in-store retail media for a decade, and what Amazon did to end it·       Why DSIQ, an ex-Microsoft team out of Seattle, built an ad server for store screens before the industry had the term, and why the company never scaled past Walmart·       The difference between a salesperson and a business development person, and why sending the wrong one into a retailer kills the deal·       Mike's five A's of in-store content: accessible, appropriate, adaptable, attractive, assembled·       Why he argues for localization over personalization, and what it means to treat 2,000 stores as 2,000 super customers·       Who he thinks reaches the in-store retail media cereal moment first·       Why in-store retail media will never be as lucrative as online, and why every retail media network is heading there anywaySupport our sponsors.This Episode is Brought to You By RetailClub.From the founders of Shoptalk and Groceryshop, RetailClub AI Festival brings together 2,000 industry leaders from September 22 to 24 for three days fully outdoors in Huntington Beach focused entirely on how AI is transforming retail. Through the Breakthruprogram, you can shape your experience before you even arrive. Request 15-minute, double opt-in meetings with the people you want to meet, join small-group conversations on the biggest questions in AI and retail, choose from more than 100 experiences, and connect over curated networking dinners. Retail and brand leaders can attend free, plus receive up to $1,750 toward travel and hotel. The Breakthru registration deadline has been extended to September 2. Register now at retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast.W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.ASU is a leading public research university and its W. P. Carey School of Business is the largest in the United States. AI-Enabled Supply Chain Strategy is a 3-day executive program running October 5-7, built by the #2-ranked Supply Chain Management department. The program is designed for senior leaders setting AI strategy across procurement, logistics, and operations.Register at https://specialevents.asu.edu/878064 with ID Code retailrazorasu for $1,500 off.Subscribe & Follow.How much did you love this episode? Drop us a 5‑star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades.Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utubeFeatured guest.Mike Hiatt. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehiatt/Founder & President of Dynamic Retailing. https://dynamic-retailing.comAuthor. Timing the Desert. https://a.co/d/07IJTQQS.Mike Hiatt is the president of Dynamic Retailing. A retail media consultancy focused on helping technology solutions providers work more effectively with retailers and assisting retailers better execute retail media strategies inside their stores. He is on the advisory boards at Venvee and Blue Zoo; he recently authored the business book Timing the Desert: A Front-Line perspective on Retail Media, Readiness, and Scale, which focuses on Hiatt’s experiences working at Walmart, Triad Retail Media, and Sam’s Club as well as key insights about where in-store retail media will land in the future of retail. Hiatt graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in Advertising Management.Chapters.00:00 Teaser 00:40 Intro 05:29 Welcome & Introduction 06:36 Early In-Store Media & Walmart TV 08:38 Building the Smart Network 12:22 Merchants vs. Marketers Friction 17:54 Timing the Desert: The Book 24:39 Being Early: DSIQ and the Ad Server Story 31:08 Business Development vs. Sales 38:27 The Retail Media Cereal Moment 44:54 In-Store vs. Online Media Philosophy 46:52 The Five A's, Localization & AI's Future 56:47 Show CloseMeet your hosts.Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Episode Music.Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.