Commerce media is evolving beyond online retail into new frontiers like out-of-home (OOH) ads at gas stations and convenience stores, creating “a once in a career window to reorient your business to the opportunity,” according to Sean McCaffrey president and CEO of GSTV, which serves commerce media ads at gas pumps.

Despite lacking the targeted personalization of search ads, GSTV considers itself “digital media in the physical world,” McCaffrey said at the 2025 OOH Media Conference last week. That’s an opportunity for advertisers to reach consumers in a space where they may be more welcome to ads than when disrupted while consuming content. But advertisers must avoid creeping consumers out and face measurement and attribution challenges to prove ROI.

Keeping consumers comfortable IRL

Personalization presents a quandary for OOH commerce media advertisers.

Commerce media networks like GSTV could tie ads to consumer-specific behavior, but personalizing them like retail websites do with search ads could seem creepier in the real world.

“I don't think the world is quite ready for your browser history to be used in physical real-world ads ‘Minority Report’ style,” McCaffrey said.

OOH marketers diverge on how consumers would respond to these one-to-one ads in the waking world. Katerina Sudit, global chief media officer at MRM Media, said she looked forward to a future of “hyperpersonalized messaging at scale like in the ‘Minority Report.’”

For GSTV, avoiding creeping out consumers means leveraging location and contextual data without collecting sensitive information. The company avoids creepiness and compliance controversies by abstaining from collecting credit card swipe data, opting instead to work with third parties.

The measurement challenge

Commerce media’s proximity to the point of sale is one of its strengths. But it also means the ad placements come with high expectations for attribution and measurement. “Every impression we place has to generate data for a sale,” McCaffrey said.

Making it faster to measure and optimize OOH inventory was a key imperative of Outdoor Advertising Association of America president and CEO Anna Bager’s conference keynote, and was listed as a potential sore spot by marketers from HubSpot, Tecovas, Lesser Evil, and others.

Connecting media impressions to actual sales outcomes remains the holy grail for commerce media, making it harder for advertisers to justify the uncertain ROI of OOH commerce media investments compared to on-site ones. “It’s just easier to dump the money into somebody who’s got a dashboard,” McCaffrey said.

That said, digital advertising can oversimplify attribution.

“One media impression I don't think should ever get credit for the entirety of the sale, much to Google's chagrin,” McCaffrey said. But until OOH matches online advertising’s measurement capabilities, marketers may remain hesitant to invest.

One agile company has opted into OOH investments without concerning itself with measuring the medium’s outcomes at all. “Everyone says measuring OOH is so hard,” said Michael Wieder, president and CMO at Lalo, “so we just say **** it.”

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