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Insights

Notes from the places people gather.

What we learn running programmes in venues, at events and on people's phones, written for the people who plan them.

Latest notes

Three short reads on where attention, rewards and sales meet. Every figure links to its source.

Consumers3 min read

Ten loyalty programmes each, and the phone is where they live

85%of South Africans used loyalty programmes in 2025/26, up from 82% a year earlier.

The average person now uses more than twice as many programmes as a decade ago. They are using them to stretch the month, and that changes what a reward has to do.

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The Truth and BrandMapp loyalty study, run in the second half of 2025 across more than 36,000 South Africans, found 85% using loyalty programmes. The average person now uses 10.4 of them, against 4.6 in 2015.

The reason is the budget, not brand love: 44% said rising food and energy costs keep them awake at night. A reward that arrives weeks later, or is worth little, gets ignored. One that lands now, where the person is standing, gets used.

And the reward lives on the phone. 51.7 million South Africans were online at the end of 2025, 79.6% of the population. The phone is where an offer is found, claimed and shown at the till.

For brands

The attention is there for an offer with real value. A question or a game on the phone, answered in the venue, with the reward redeemed at the bar or the till, meets people inside a habit they already have.

For venues and stores

A guest who scans and signs up stops being anonymous. With their consent, you learn who came back, when and why, and brands pay to reach the audience you built.

How we run it Rewards land in the VAYA GO wallet and are redeemed on the spot. Every sign-up carries the consent the person gave, and they can change their mind.

Sources: Truth and BrandMapp loyalty study, reported in Business Day, 22 March 2026; DataReportal, Digital 2026: South Africa.

For consumers Campaign Builder

Retail media3 min read

Under the roof: the best-targeted screen is the one beside the shelf

60%+of US grocery shoppers say they bought a product right after seeing it on an in-store screen.

Online retail media gets the headlines, but most buying still happens in a shop. The screen above the aisle and at the till reaches people at the moment they choose.

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More than 80% of US retail sales, and more than 91% of food and beverage sales, still happen in physical stores. Yet WARC calls in-store one of the least developed parts of retail media, a channel it expects to reach US$200.4 billion worldwide in 2026. eMarketer forecasts US in-store retail media spend to grow 33.1% this year.

South Africa has its own proof. Shoprite's marketing, media and consumer-insights business earned R593 million in the six months to December 2025 and expects more than R1 billion for the year. It sells screens at store entrances, at the tills and in its liquor stores, and the knowledge of what shoppers actually buy.

Much of the country's buying happens outside the big chains: in independent liquor stores, convenience stores, taverns and bars, where no retailer's media network reaches. Under that roof the audience is not inferred. It is standing in front of the product.

For brands

Book the last three feet like media: the screen at the fridge door and the till, with a scan-to-claim offer, so the play, the scan and the sale land on one report.

For venues and stores

The screens you already have start working as media. Brands fund the content, the offers bring shoppers back, and higher-tier venues earn a share of the advertising revenue.

How we run it Brand Box puts the campaign on the store's own screens, and Hello Brand OS reports each play, scan and redemption, labelled by how it was measured.

Sources: WARC Media forecast, reported by invidis, 21 August 2026; eMarketer, cited by Osmos; Moneyweb, republished by The Citizen, 15 July 2026.

Retail media Brand Box

On and Off Trade3 min read

From bar to shelf: the drink people try in a venue is the one they buy later

54%of consumers have bought in a store a drink they first tried in a bar or restaurant.

Venues are where people try a drink. Shops are where they buy it again. Brands that join the two stop paying for the same customer twice.

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The on-trade is not a side channel. NIQ puts bars, restaurants and other venues at 61% of global beverage alcohol value sales, excluding wine. And in CGA's survey of 1,600 US consumers, 54% had bought in a store a drink they first tried in a venue. The habit starts at the bar.

The trouble is that the two halves are usually planned and measured apart: a sampling budget in the bar, a shelf deal in the shop, and nothing joining the guest who tried it to the shopper who bought it.

The thread that travels between them is the phone. A reward earned in the venue and claimed in a store, or a code scanned at the shelf after a screen in the bar, links trial to purchase, with the person's consent attached.

For brands

Plan the venue and the store as one campaign: a screen and a game in the bar, the offer at the fridge door, and one report that shows whether trial turned into sales.

For venues and stores

The bar becomes the launch pad brands pay for, and the store sees the shoppers the launch sent its way.

How we run it One campaign runs in a bar on match day and at the fridge door of a liquor store, sent once from Campaign Builder to the venues and stores that sell the brand.

Sources: NIQ, 11 July 2024; CGA by NIQ, reported in The Spirits Business, 19 December 2022. Both studies were run outside South Africa.

On Trade and Off Trade Trade Connect

Worth watching

An outside conversation we keep coming back to, with where we fit.

A New Era Of Retail Media, on Hello Brand's YouTube channel. The video loads from YouTube only when you press play.

What the conversation covers

  • How digital media is changing advertising, and how brands can stay ahead.
  • How to navigate digital media and its evolving role.
  • The challenges brands face in advertising today.

Video55 minutes

A new era of retail media

By combining first-party data on shoppers, exclusive inventory and engaging ad formats, retail media is now the third-largest digital channel in the world. In this conversation, leaders in technology, retail and advertising talk through what that means for brands.

An Insider panel discussion, presented by Snowflake, with speakers from Albertsons Media Collective, IPG Mediabrands and Snowflake. We are sharing it because the argument it makes about the store is the one we build for; the views and the figures are the panel's, not ours.

Where Hello Brand fits

Screens in the places people gather, linked to the phones in their hands: customer insight, engagement with an instant reward, sales at the point of purchase and clean first-party data, collected with consent. At the centre is the L-shape squeeze back, which brings a brand into the content guests are already watching.

Watch the full video Retail media: Off Trade Media and venue screens

What to watch, and where we fit

Seven moments worth your time, with what each one means for a brand at store level. Press a time to play from there.

  1. 05:08

    Closest to the sale. With cookie targeting falling away, the panel's case for retail media is that it sits nearer the moment of purchase than any other digital channel. IPG Mediabrands

    How we run it That nearness is the whole off-trade proposition. Our screens go where the decision is made: above the aisle, on the fridge door and at the till, in the last three feet before someone reaches for the product.

  2. 12:21

    Better data pays before measurement does. Planning off higher-quality audience data returned 20 to 30 per cent more, the panel says, even where closed-loop sales could not be tracked. Albertsons Media Collective

    How we run it Our first-party data comes from people who signed up at the venue or the store and said what they are interested in, with consent attached. Nothing is inferred from a cookie.

  3. 13:52

    The honest gap: it is still banners. Retail media is mostly price-and-item display; the rich, engaging content is not there yet, and retail media networks have no studios to make it. Albertsons Media Collective

    How we run it This gap is what our formats exist for. A squeeze back shares the screen with the sport or the content already playing, then a question or a game earns an instant reward redeemed on the spot.

  4. 17:29

    Joining the screen to the store. The real shift is unifying on-site advertising with what happens in the aisle, and being able to measure both as one thing, with consent handled across both. Snowflake

    How we run it Hello Brand OS plans the screen and the phone in one place and reports them in one place, so the play, the scan and the redemption land on the same report instead of three.

  5. 29:46

    Bigger than linear TV. The host cites an expectation that retail media spend passes linear TV by the end of 2026, which changes who in a business controls the budget. Insider

    How we run it It is the reason to treat the screens above the bar and the aisle as media to be planned and booked, not as decoration the venue happens to own.

  6. 38:36

    The in-store frontier, and how to get it wrong. Digitising the store is where retail media could go badly: flashing lights down the aisle, the radio turned up, a phone buzzing every three feet. The line is an elegant customer experience against a revenue grab. Albertsons Media Collective

    How we run it The clearest statement of why we build the way we do. Our screens share the picture rather than interrupt it, people choose what they share and can change their mind, and the reward has to be worth having or the whole thing stops working.

  7. 40:09

    Incrementality, not just return on ad spend. The question worth asking is whether sales genuinely lifted, rather than whether a channel can claim them, and the industry has no shared way to answer it yet. Albertsons Media Collective

    How we run it Every figure we report says whether it was estimated, modelled, measured or verified. We would rather show a smaller number you can trust.

See the work

  • Heineken 

    Case study. A quick insight question swapped for a reward, verified at the bar.

  • Tyger Valley 

    In progress. A retail media network of large LED screens in a Cape Town mall.

  • Flying Fish 

    Case study. Guests on the venue Wi-Fi got a chance to win and said what they thought of the drink.

All work with results

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