Dollar General prioritizes in-store audio over digital screens
Dollar General is expanding in-store audio advertising to 12,000 stores by July 2026 through new partnership with QSIC, prioritizing audio over digital screens due to small store footprints. The platform offers real-time campaign measurement and inventory-based ad targeting.
This signals audio advertising becoming a viable alternative to visual ads in retail media networks, especially for smaller format stores. Brands should test audio creative formats and consider how voice-based messaging differs from display advertising in driving purchase decisions.
Retail media networks are diversifying beyond digital screens into audio, creating new advertising inventory types. This expansion gives brands more touchpoints but requires developing audio-specific creative strategies.
Test audio ad creative formats now - voice messaging requires different copy and timing than visual ads to drive conversions.
Evaluate retail media spend allocation between visual and audio channels as more retailers adopt audio-first approaches.
Bottom Line
Dollar General's audio-first approach signals new retail media format for space-constrained stores.
Source Lens
Industry Context
Useful background context, but lower-priority than direct platform, community, or operator intelligence.
Impact Level
medium
Dollar General's audio-first approach signals new retail media format for space-constrained stores.
Key Stat / Trigger
12,000 stores with audio advertising by July 2026
Focus on the operational implication, not just the headline.
Full Coverage
Store of the Future // April 21, 2026 Dollar General prioritizes in-store audio over digital screens By Mitchell Parton Ivy Liu As retailers start to experiment with digital screens to display advertising in stores, Dollar General is taking a more old-school approach.
Dollar General announced last week that it would expand its in-store audio network to 6,000 more stores by July after beginning the process this month, under a new partnership with audio technology provider QSIC.
That means Dollar General will have 12,000 stores total with in-store music and audio advertising by that time, including 6,000 stores that were previously running under another provider. Those stores are being switched over to QSIC’s platform.
Austin Leonard, vp and general manager of DG Media Network — Dollar General’s retail media network — told Modern Retail that the company chose QSIC to make the audio channel more productive and able to scale across thousands more locations.
Leonard declined to comment on when the platform would reach all 20,000 of its stores, but said he hopes to do so and that the 12,000 number covers many of its highest-traffic stores. “When you think about the size of our stores, we think it actually lends them very well to in-store audio,” Leonard said.
“We don’t have a lot of extra space to put screens up.” Dollar General had been piloting in-store audio for two to three years with the previous provider. Leonard said the firm was a more traditional audio provider with only basic measurement capabilities, but did not name the exact vendor.
“The software and the measurement process were pretty manual and pretty basic in terms of what we wanted to do,” Leonard said. Leonard said the company also chose to prioritize in-store audio over installing a network of digital screens. “Because of the format of our stores, we don’t have a lot of extra space to put screens up,” he said.
Leonard said going all-in on audio allows the company to move faster on advertising than other retailers. Retailers such as Kroger, CVS and Albertsons have begun adding screens in hundreds, if not thousands, of stores.
The Dollar General executive added that screens and associated hardware can take up a lot of space and disrupt store traffic flow, especially in such a small footprint. Leonard declined to comment on any future plans for a screen network. “Building videos, building display ads, takes time, given the approval process,” Leonard said.
“Our advantage is that, with the size of our stores, [the update] will be much more impactful to the experience quicker, so that it’ll be something that our customers will notice and enjoy.”
The QSIC audio platform can show DG’s team which products are available in the retailer’s inventory to advertise and ensure the ads run at the right time at the right stores. It also allows Dollar General to track sales lift before the campaign concludes, based on store-level sales data.
QSIC uses raw transaction data to build product profiles to analyze how and when they sell, then simulates campaigns before they run. “We measure all these things we’re doing, essentially in as real-time as we can get the data.
Most of the time, you’re looking at it one day after it happened,” said Matt Elsley, co-founder and CEO of QSIC, adding that the software allows for the campaigns to be adjusted mid-campaign. QSIC provides the hardware, including speakers and a reader, that can automatically adjust the store’s audio volume to avoid getting too loud or too quiet.
Leonard said the measurement capabilities are important given advertisers’ expectation in the e-commerce era of real-time feedback on what’s working in their campaigns and what’s not.
“QSIC is, from what I could tell, the only provider that allows us to actually connect the data to be able to run measurement in the middle of the campaign and close the loop quickly, and do that at scale in an automated process,” Leonard said. “It essentially brings what I think is the e-commerce/programmatic style of measurement into the store.”
Chris Walton, president and CEO of Omni Talk Retail and a former Target executive, said the rise of AI-created content makes audio networks like this especially attractive to retailers, as it is now easier to quickly make audio content for any brand they want to promote.
He also said that screens are difficult and expensive to pull off, needing power wired throughout the store, and noted the higher cost of screens versus speakers that stores may have already.
“It’s a really valuable profit engine for the retailer, at the end of the day, and it’s much, much less expensive than trying to engineer your store with digital screens and having to program content on those digital screens,” Walton said. Installing screens “is what we’ve seen a lot of people start to do, and so, I give Dollar General a lot of credit for go
Original Source
This briefing is based on reporting from Modern Retail. Use the original post for full primary-source context.
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