Dan Best brings two decades of digital commercial leadership to his new role as VP of Commercial at Corner Collective, having previously steered revenue growth at AI creative testing platform Daivid, led the UK FMCG vertical at Teads, and formed part of the core leadership team at video advertising pioneer Unruly during its acquisition by News Corp.
Best now steps into a market that has long proved challenging for advertisers: the fragmented long tail of independent convenience shops, forecourts, and smart vending environments. Corner Collective has created a retail media network for the sector, featuring store-level EPOS data, promising brands measurable sales lift in environments where shoppers make rapid, mission-led buying choices.
NDA sat down with Best to discuss the role of convenience retail media, how physical shelf-edge screens intersect with an AI-directed consumer journey, and why creative benchmarking is the sector’s next frontier.
Retail media is expanding at breakneck speed, but most conversation focuses on the supermarket chains. What drew you to Corner Collective?
It feels remarkably similar to the early days at Unruly. The market is evolving rapidly, and the core challenge is widely acknowledged across the industry: make it easy to buy, and make it easy to sell. Right now, independent retail is fragmented. Different shop owners and fascias operate in silos, creating disparate standards that make scale frustrating for buyers.
Corner Collective solves that operational friction by aggregating independent convenience, chains like Londis, Budgens, Premier, and Nisa, and modern screen-enabled touchpoints like vending and forecourts into a single addressable network.
Furthermore, if you are an FMCG brand, you do not want to take media budget out of your front pocket and drop it in the back pocket talking to the same habitual supermarket customers.
Brands grow by finding light and new buyers. Independent convenience stores are where those audiences actually shop, particularly younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha demographics who buy on impulse rather than a rigid weekly list.
How does shopper behaviour in a local convenience shop differ from a major supermarket trip?
When shoppers walk into a supermarket, they usually have an established basket in mind. In a local convenience store, visits are short, frequent, and marked by an open mindset. People walk in to solve an immediate need or grab an impulse item, and they are far more receptive to trying something new.
Because baskets are not locked down, the environment offers genuine opportunities for mental availability and brand trial. We are pairing that dynamic consumer behaviour with an adtech stack that allows brands to activate digitally across storefronts, aisles, shelf edges, and checkouts.
Measuring the return on investment in retail media is under heavy scrutiny. How does the network prove commercial impact?
The standout capability here is hard EPOS data matched across stores. Instead of relying entirely on modelled recall or brand uplift figures, we split networks into exposed stores running digital creative and unexposed control stores.
Because we pull SKU-level sales data directly from the tills during campaigns, we can isolate exactly what media drove in terms of incremental volume, value, and return on ad spend. That level of transparency gives brands certainty that their spend is generating actual sales lift rather than capturing transactions that were bound to happen anyway.
Retail media has traditionally leaned towards static annual shelf placements. How are digital formats altering that dynamic?
Static cardboard barkers or paper displays require physical distribution, manual fitting, and prolonged tenancy agreements. Digital shelf-edge video rails and screen formats change that equation entirely.
Retailers must function more like sophisticated digital media owners.
If Mars or Coca-Cola wants to trigger a contextual campaign based on local temperature changes, a major football fixture, or an emotional occasion, dynamic scheduling makes that possible instantly. Motion right next to the product at the shelf edge guides consideration immediately prior to selection, while till screens capture final add-ons while the basket is still open.
How does physical point-of-sale retail media fit into the broader modern marketing funnel?
Many brand teams are starting to realise that retail media is not solely a bottom-of-funnel trade budget exercise; it is an effective upper-funnel and consideration channel.
Moreover, as consumer discovery shifts toward autonomous algorithms and artificial intelligence, in-store media becomes the ultimate physical reality check. A shopper might stroll into a store intending to buy a particular item suggested by an AI assistant or large language model.
Point-of-purchase media right across the entrance, the shelf rail, and the till is the last physical touchpoint available to nudge that human decision before transaction.
Coming from creative optimisation at Daivid, where do you see the creative development of retail media heading next?
Historically, retail media creative has suffered from poor design and generic copy. The immediate opportunity is to introduce proper testing, creative benchmarking, and quality metrics directly aligned to hard till sales.
When you combine creative effectiveness data with granular checkout outcomes, you unlock the ability to systematically understand which visuals, prompts, and calls to action genuinely drive bottom-line conversion.
