Framework
The readiness pyramid
Six layers that build on each other and settle whether a screen network is sellable — before the first campaign is sold.
What this is for
Large retail organisations usually have screens, players and functioning content processes already. That regularly produces the expectation that retail media is essentially a sales task: the space exists, now someone just has to sell it.
The pyramid contradicts that expectation by putting the preconditions in order. I use it in workshops with customer teams and internally, to assess how far an initiative actually is.
The six layers
1. Hardware and screens. Devices, players, connectivity, failure behaviour. The only layer most organisations already have — and therefore the one regularly mistaken for the whole journey.
2. Inventory and location data. A screen becomes a describable, filterable, bookable surface: unique ID, location attributes, environment, visibility. This sounds like a data modelling question and is a product decision — only here does something emerge that can appear in a media plan.
3. Time and slot logic. What is a sellable unit? How much time is actually sellable? What happens on overbooking, what on failure? Without answers, manual exceptions appear, and exceptions destroy the data foundation.
4. Commercialisation model. Direct, controlled in-store, programmatic — or a combination. This decision determines how strictly the layers underneath have to be specified.
5. Reporting. Proof of delivery towards the advertiser. The layer on which budget renewal is decided.
6. Programmatic connection. Only sensible once one to five hold. Before that it generates reach on a data foundation that will not survive scrutiny.
The rule that matters
The order is the content of the model. Sell layer four while layer two is missing and you create commitments operations cannot keep — and you find out when the first advertiser asks for proof.
In use, the pyramid is therefore less a checklist than a conversation device: it forces technology, data, operations and commercialisation to answer the same question at the same time.
What is deliberately missing
No maturity score, no traffic lights. Both tempt you to declare a layer "largely covered" and move on. A layer is either decided or it is not.
The corresponding case is written up as the case study on retail media readiness.