Quick answer: Dollar General's DG Media Network reaches 75% of Americans within five miles of a store, generates 2.7 billion store visits per year, and operates across 21,000+ locations. Under VP and GM Austin Leonard, the network was built offsite first, expanded into AI powered in store audio across 12,000 stores, and now unifies onsite and offsite buying through a first of its kind integration with The Trade Desk.
In this episode of Unlocking Retail Media, Avery sat down with Austin Leonard to discuss how to build a retail media network on a non-digital native footprint, why offsite came first, and what omnichannel measurement actually requires. Below are the five biggest takeaways.
Takeaway #1: Why Dollar General Reaches Shoppers Other Retail Media Networks Miss
"I like to say that we're building the last mile of e-commerce for the last mile of America." - Austin Leonard, VP and GM, DG Media Network
Dollar General operates over 21,000 stores in the United States, more than Starbucks or McDonald's. Key facts about its shopper reach:
- 80% of stores sit in towns with fewer than 20,000 residents, often as the only general store in town.
- 75% of Americans live within five miles of a Dollar General.
- More than 2B transactions occur each year across the network.
- 18,000+ stores now offer same day delivery through a DoorDash partnership.
- 7,000+ stores carry fresh produce under the Dollar General and DG Market formats.
For CPG brands, this footprint reaches a shopper base that is hard to engage through digital channels alone. As Leonard described it, Dollar General serves as "America's general store," not a dollar store.
Takeaway #2: Why Dollar General Started Offsite Before Onsite
Most retail media networks start with onsite sponsored listings. DG Media Network did the opposite, and it offers a useful playbook for retailers without a large digital footprint.
"We started very differently than other retail media networks," Leonard explained. "We were able to reach all of these customers that are going to all our stores. But we were reaching them primarily through offsite tactics like The Trade Desk and on Meta, because we didn't have a huge digital footprint."
DG Media Network has been operating since 2018, building on traditional shopper marketing tactics like shelf talkers and aisle signage while extending offsite to put advertiser messages in front of an audience defined by physical store visits rather than digital sessions. As same day delivery and the DG app have grown, the team has migrated more capability onto dg.com and in app surfaces. The takeaway for other retailers: build outward from the assets and audiences you actually have, not the channel mix a standard retail media template assumes.
Takeaway #3: What It Takes to Scale In Store Media
Question: How big is Dollar General's in store radio network? DG Media Network's in store radio reached 6,000 stores during its pilot phase and is expanding to 12,000 stores by July through a partnership with QSIC, making it one of the largest in store radio networks in the United States.
The expansion required more than additional speakers. Leonard described what made the pilot truly investable as "investment grade media," and it came down to personalization at scale:
- Product catalog and POS integration. Ads run only in stores where the advertised product is actually in stock.
- Day part and category targeting. The right message plays at the right day and time based on category traffic flow.
- Real time measurement. The system tracks checkouts against ad plays and compares performance to stores without radio running.
"In order for this to be additive to what we're offering on the ad side, it really needed to be personalized to each store as best as possible," Leonard said. "And in order to do that at scale, you actually need pretty sophisticated technology."
The lesson for retailers exploring in store media: a screen or speaker without measurement and personalization will struggle to attract national budgets.
Takeaway #4: Why Outcome Based Measurement Unlocks National Ad Budgets
Question: What measurement do brands need from a retail media network? Leonard was direct: outcome based measurement that proves incremental sales lift, delivered consistently across digital and physical channels.
"It has to be outcome based," Leonard said. "We have to be able to prove that by investing in this tactic or in this platform, we are able to drive sales that they wouldn't have gotten at the store by just having their product on the shelf."
Equally important is breaking down silos between digital and in store. "Our shoppers don't shop in silos," Leonard noted. "They don't think about it as, oh, this was a digital ad, or I was technically a digital shop but then I bought in brick and mortar." A unified measurement view lets advertisers run a single campaign across onsite, offsite, and in store while controlling frequency, reducing waste, and sequencing creative. Leonard used Gain detergent as an example: national awareness flows into customized pack size messaging on dg.com, then shelf and aisle signage, then in store audio that reinforces the same brand story at the moment of purchase.
Takeaway #5: How AI Powers Personalization, Measurement, and Speed at DG Media Network
Question: How is Dollar General using AI in retail media? AI shows up across DG Media Network in four primary ways:
- Audience modeling. Predicting what customer groups will be interested in next, rather than only reporting past purchases.
- Insights automation. Reducing the time analysts spend pulling reports so they can focus on next campaign actions.
- Creative production. Generating in store audio from human written scripts using voices that sound natural, lowering production cost.
- Campaign optimization. Integrating DG data into The Trade Desk to optimize media in flight based on what's converting.
"We see AI as a huge enabler," Leonard said. "When you have a data set across as many stores as we have, some of the core things happening behind the scenes are just the ability to crunch that data faster and connect those dots so you can more accurately build a profile of our shopper base." The opportunity Leonard sees is creative, tailored to context at a level that wasn't economical before, while keeping the human judgment that prevents ads from sounding like AI.
Bonus Insight: Why Onsite and Offsite Should Be Bought Together
One of the more candid moments in the conversation was Leonard describing what he called his "white whale": unifying onsite and offsite buying through a single platform. DG Media Network has launched an integration with The Trade Desk and Kevel that allows advertisers to buy DG owned onsite inventory and offsite media in one campaign.
"We're actually building a central hub that connects into many different platforms. Serving an ad in four different places that are four different platforms, that's hard," Leonard said. "Being able to tie in our own inventory into the buys that we're running through The Trade Desk is a huge advancement."
Benefits of unified onsite and offsite buying include managing reach and frequency across owned and external inventory, sequencing creative from offsite to onsite landing experiences, and avoiding the situation where a brand's offsite click drives the shopper to a page that serves a competitor's ad. Very few retailers offer this model today.
Conclusion: Start With the Customer
Asked what advice he would give to retailers earlier in their retail media journey, Leonard kept it simple.
"Start with the customer. You need to directly understand what is most important to your customer. How does your customer act in your retail environments, both digitally and physically? And build from there."
For Dollar General, that meant offsite before onsite, in store radio engineered for personalization, measurement built around outcomes, and a buying experience that doesn't force advertisers to treat onsite and offsite as separate worlds. The common thread is differentiation grounded in what only your retail environment can offer. As Leonard put it, "What is unique about your environment, and how do you deliver something that they can't get somewhere else."
Listen to the Full Conversation on Unlocking Retail Media
For more insights like these, tune in to the full episode of Unlocking Retail Media, the podcast where Kevel CEO James Avery sits down with industry leaders and innovators shaping the future of retail advertising.
Listen to this episode with Austin Leonard here.
