The advertising industry's biggest brands, agencies, retailers, and technology companies gathered in the south of France for Cannes Lions 2026 to discuss the future of advertising. While AI dominated many conversations, another trend emerged just as clearly: the future of retail media is as much physical as it is digital.
E Ink attended Cannes Lions to continue to introduce ePaper as a new medium for in-store retail media and digital signage. Our conversations reinforced what we're seeing across the industry as retailers look beyond websites and mobile apps to transform the physical store into a measurable, revenue-generating media channel.
Retail Media Is Expanding Beyond eCommerce
Retail media has become one of advertising's fastest-growing sectors, driven by eCommerce and retailers' first-party data. The next phase of growth is happening inside physical stores, where the majority of purchases still take place.
Retailers are investing in in-store retail media networks that deliver relevant promotions, product information, and brand messaging at the point of purchase. These networks create new advertising inventory for brands while improving the shopping experience for consumers.
The question is no longer if in-store retail media will grow—it's how retailers will scale it.
Why Physical Retail Experiences Matter in the AI Era
As AI makes digital content easier and faster to create, earning consumer attention becomes more difficult. One theme repeated throughout Cannes Lions was that physical experiences continue to break through digital noise.
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising succeeds because it reaches consumers in the real world. Messages cannot be skipped, blocked, or lost in crowded online feeds. The same principle applies inside retail stores, where shoppers are making purchasing decisions in real time.
Rather than replacing creative work, AI's greatest opportunity may be optimizing where, when, and to whom creative is delivered. Combined with connected in-store displays, retailers can personalize messaging based on promotions, inventory, shopper behavior, or time of day.
Why ePaper Is Built for In-Store Retail Media
Building a successful retail media network requires display technology that is scalable, energy efficient, and easy to deploy.
E Ink has shipped more than one billion electronic shelf labels (ESLs) worldwide, creating a proven foundation for connected retail. Our larger color ePaper displays—including the 75-inch Spectra™ 6 display—extend that infrastructure beyond the shelf edge, enabling retailers to deliver promotions, brand campaigns, and product storytelling throughout the customer journey.
Unlike traditional digital signage, ePaper displays consume power only when content changes, enabling ultra-low power operation and cordless deployment. Retailers can digitize more areas of the store while reducing installation complexity, maintenance, and energy consumption.
The result is a flexible, scalable digital signage solution for retail media that helps retailers monetize in-store traffic while creating engaging experiences for shoppers.
Cannes Lions Validated the Future of Physical Retail Media
Cannes Lions 2026 reinforced that the retail media ecosystem is expanding beyond digital channels and into physical retail environments where purchasing decisions happen every day.
For retailers, this creates a new monetizable media channel. For brands, it provides another opportunity to influence shoppers at the moment of decision. For consumers, it delivers more relevant experiences inside the store.
E Ink's ePaper technology is uniquely positioned to support this evolution by combining the flexibility of digital content with the simplicity, sustainability, and ultra-low power performance required for modern retail.
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