BlueZoo Recommends New Book on In-Store Retail Media Measurement and Scale

Timing the Desert recognizes BlueZoo’s early role in advancing privacy-first audience measurement for in-store retail media networks

BlueZoo Inc. is proud to be acknowledged as an innovator in in-store retail media measurement in Mike Hiatt’s newly released book Timing the Desert: A Front Line Perspective on Retail Media, Readiness, and Scale. Mike Hiatt joined BlueZoo’s advisory board shortly after restarting Dynamic Retailing in early 2023 and BlueZoo has been grateful for his insight into the future of retail.

The book reflects Hiatt’s decades of experience working at the intersection of retail, media, and technology and examines how in-store retail media networks have progressed from early experimentation toward scalable, data-driven platforms. It offers perspective on the operational, organizational, and measurement challenges that retailers encounter as they build media programs intended to serve both brands and consumers.

In Chapter 17, Hiatt recounts his experience piloting BlueZoo’s audience measurement technology while working inside Sam’s Club. Faced with the high cost and limited frequency of Neilsen’s traditional annual viewership studies, Hiatt describes how BlueZoo’s privacy-first audience measurement provided a more modern, cost-effective, and near-real-time alternative for understanding in-store ad exposure.

“I started a measurement pilot with a company called BlueZoo,” Hiatt writes. “They anonymously tracked cell phones inside the club—giving us potential impression counts, dwell time, and near-real-time data to inform advertisers how well their ads were being exposed to our member base. Better results, less investment.”

Mike explains how BlueZoo’s technology enabled more actionable insights compared to traditional measurement approaches and helped lay the groundwork for today’s data-driven retail media networks.

“Mike’s book captures an important chapter in the history of retail media and audience measurement,” said Bill Evans, CEO of BlueZoo. “It’s an honor to see BlueZoo recognized as part of that journey. Timing the Desert shows how early efforts to modernize measurement helped shape the systems that retailers and brands rely on today.”

BlueZoo’s inclusion in the book reflects the importance of audience measurement in modern in-store retail media networks. Mike recognizes that, as retailers seek scalable ways to quantify customer engagement, ad measurement remains critical for advertiser trust and long-term retailer success.

Timing the Desert is recommended reading for professionals involved in digital signage, commerce media, and retail technology who want a deeper understanding of how early innovation efforts shaped today’s industry and where the future of in-store media is headed. The book is now available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle formats.

About BlueZoo, Inc.

BlueZoo Inc. delivers foot traffic analytics services to customers in the out-of-home advertising, retail, and insurance industries.  BlueZoo has deployed thousands of sensors to hundreds of customers throughout the world and its products are protected by 7 patents.   Customers include JCDecaux, Sodexo, and Executive Channel Network.  All BlueZoo products are GDPR compliant and regularly audited by ePrivacy of Hamburg, Germany.  BlueZoo is based in Menlo Park, California, and is funded by Fusion Fund.