OUR INVENTORY
Out of Home
Retail media advertising is the practice of placing brand messaging inside or around the retail environment itself, on screens, shelves, and other touchpoints shoppers encounter while they're actively browsing or buying. Retail media meets buyers at the point of decision, when intent is highest and the path to purchase is shortest.
For i-media, that retail environment is the UK's motorway service area (MSA) network: convenience stores, food courts, and forecourts visited by millions of motorists every week. It's retail media built for a mobile, purchase-primed audience.
High-intent audiences. Retail media reaches shoppers who are already primed to buy, who are browsing, comparing, and making active purchasing decisions in the moment.
Efficiency at scale. A single piece of retail media creative can run across an entire network simultaneously, or be tailored by site, time of day, or audience, all managed centrally rather than coordinating multiple print runs and installations.
Measurable performance. Because retail media runs in a defined, trackable environment, it's easier to tie exposure back to footfall, dwell time, and downstream sales impact than with less contained forms of advertising.
i-media has access to a national audience of spenders. Service stations are high-dwell environments where users are in receptive, purchasing mindsets. Plus, our Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) data backs up spending habits and campaign performance.
i-media regularly receives EPOS data from our landlord partners. By analysing consumer purchasing behaviour, we know the best times and locations to push creative. It also means we can show change in sales pre, during and post your campaign, proving its effectiveness in real, verifiable terms.
Motorway service areas receive over £1.5bn of non-fuel spending, with 82% of visitors buying a snack. We have access to an audience ready and eager to spend.
Enhance your campaign by combining retail media with our other formats: from large format digital billboards to static washroom panels, we have advertising space suitable for every opportunity.
Because every format is screen-based, creative can be updated, scheduled, or swapped remotely, letting messaging respond to time of day or seasonal moments without a physical site visit.
Advanced ANPR Targeting
i-media's retail media network is built around contextual integration. Screens are placed exactly where shoppers make decisions.
Our retail media services are deployed inside the retail environments at the heart of the UK's motorway service areas, currently anchored by our WHSmith network, reaching an average of 6.8 million weekly visitors across in-store D4 screens and shelf gondolas.
These sites sit within MSAs that, between them, drive an estimated £1.5bn in annual non-fuel spend, placing brands right at the transaction, not on the approach to it.
As our retail media network expands, deployment is extending across further convenience and forecourt retail spaces on the Strategic Road Network (SRN) (motorways and major A-roads) that carries the bulk of the UK's long-distance driving traffic.
Retail media advertising cost varies depening on a number of factors, including location, utilisation of ad-tech, format type, and campaign length and flight. For more information on how our advertising costs are calculated, see the guide below.
INVENTORY
Discover the entire range of our screen inventory - from large format D48s to internal D6s, EV screens and more.
Yes. i-media's retail media network reaches motorists across a broad range of categories. It works well for brands outside FMCG and grocery, including automotive, travel, finance, and leisure, wherever the goal is reaching a high-intent audience mid-journey.
You do need to source your own creative. Our in-house team is happy to help with formatting changes. For a full breakdown of specifications, see here.
Yes. Our retail media screens are fully digital, so creative can be updated, scheduled, or swapped remotely so messaging can reflect live product availability, stock levels, or promotions as a campaign runs.
Rather than relying on estimated footfall, i-media works with EPOS data supplied by our landlord partners. Visibility into actual purchasing behaviour lets us identify the strongest times and locations to run creative, and, just as importantly, lets us report back on campaign performance in real terms, not modelled estimates.
Find out how we can intelligently reach your audience. Tell us who you'd like to reach.
Yes, vehicle-led targeting is the foundation that the geographic, demographic and behavioural options build on, so it can be combined with them. For example, you can layer vehicle data with geography or audience profile to narrow your audience. Reach out to the team to know more.
Yes, vehicle-led targeting with ANPR can reach drivers of rival makes and models, and competitor targeting is a proven use. You choose the vehicles to target, and the right creative reaches those drivers while they are at an i-media motorway service area.
Vehicle-led targeting lets brands reach people by the actual vehicle they are driving. ANPR cameras read every vehicle entering its motorway service areas, so you can target the makes, models and fuel types that matter to your brand.
Yes, intent targeting can be layered with profile, geography or vehicle-led targeting to narrow in on the right person at the right time. Reach out to our team to create a bespoke audience
No, intent targeting with ANPR Audiences defines audiences, not individuals. No personal data is used to identify or target any one person.
Yes, brand conquesting works for your own customers as well as a competitor's. You can promote new products to existing customers while also reaching a wider audience you want to be in front of.
Brand conquesting on ANPR Audiences is built on Starcount's open banking spend data, covering around 20% of the UK population who have opted in. It reflects real spend, not survey answers or modelled interest, and is matched to vehicles at i-media's motorway service areas.
Brand conquesting in out-of-home advertising is intent shown through spend: you reach the customers of a competitor, or your own, based on where people actually spend their money. A bank can target a rival bank's customers, or a coffee chain can put a switch offer in front of another chain's regulars.
Intent audiences are matched to the vehicles on i-media's network, so your message can reach an in-market audience when they arrive at a motorway service area. The creative can be triggered in real time, rather than after the moment has passed.
Intent-based audience targeting reaches drivers who are showing signs of being in the market, through what they research or where they spend. ANPR Audiences delivers intent targeting in two ways, in-market behaviour and brand conquesting, both matched to vehicles at i-media's motorway service areas.
ANPR Audiences matches each vehicle to a postcode sector, and that area to a Starcount audience profile. The result is a defined audience for every screen, built from real spend behaviour rather than modelled estimates. i-media defines audiences, not individuals.
Yes, Mindset audiences can be bought programmatically, so you can plan and activate them alongside your digital campaigns. It is the same audience and the same data, bought the way your team already buys.
ANPR Audiences combines three sources: ANPR vehicle recognition at i-media's motorway service areas, Starcount's open banking spend data, and mobile location data. Together they describe where drivers live, how they spend and how they travel.
Yes, i-media can build a bespoke audience from more than 3,000 behaviours and demographics, so you reach only your target customer. Most demand is bespoke, so if the audience you need is not a ready-made mindset, we can build it around your brief.
50+ ready-made audience profiles are available to target today through ANPR Audiences, with bespoke audiences built on request.
Audiences travel for work, leisure, and family. A plan built only around where they live misses every moment they're elsewhere. i-media's motorway network reaches the same valuable audiences in a far less contested environment, typically at a fraction of the cost of equivalent in-city premium formats.
Geographical audience targeting uses ANPR vehicle data matched to partial postcodes data to identify where drivers visiting an i-media site actually live. Advertisers can reach a defined regional audience while they're away from home, on the motorway network, without paying in-city media premiums.
Yes. i-media's network delivers up to one million visitors a week from the Greater London catchment, clearing that mark in 4 out of every 10 weeks. Across a full year, 56% of all London-registered vehicles visit the network, the highest match rate of any UK metro area measured.
Friday is the single biggest day across the London Metro catchment, a consistent getaway-day pattern that repeats almost every week of the year. Within Core London, weekends outperform weekdays by 25%, creating two distinct, predictable audience rhythms that planners can build schedules around with confidence.
No, it closes a coverage gap. In-city formats reach audiences within the city but go dark the moment someone drives out. i-media picks up exactly where those formats lose the audience, extending real coverage of a full week rather than competing for the same in-city moments.
i-media's visitor data reflects real weekly and daily visitation patterns captured via ANPR, not projected estimates. Planners can forecast delivery volumes against known peak weeks and peak days. A 6-screen campaign against the Greater London catchment alone delivers over 1.7 million plays in a single week.
Geographic targeting is available across all major UK metro areas including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, and Birmingham, each mappable to specific sites and forecastable delivery volumes. London has the highest network match rate at 56% of all registered vehicles.
