Digital signage and retail media in health and beauty: clinics, parapharmacy and perfumery

Where do screens belong in health and beauty retail?

Where the customer is already waiting or already choosing. In a clinic, the waiting room and the front desk. In a parapharmacy, the counter and the dermocosmetics shelf. In a perfumery, the window and the brand island. These three businesses look more alike from the street than they are: the first sells an appointment, the second sells advice and repeat purchase, the third sells desire. What they share is awkward for signage: nobody walks in to look at screens. They walk in to solve something, and a screen only helps if it stays out of the way.

What does a screen do in a clinic waiting room?

It fills dead time, and there is something worth doing with that time: reminding patients of seasonal campaigns or situations that can help them look after their health. It is a screen that accompanies, not one that insists. It can also make visible the services the clinic already offers (half of patients do not know them) or show a queue. What it should never look like is an ad inside a medical consultation.

And in a parapharmacy or a perfumery?

Here the screen competes with the product, which is one metre away. It works when it changes something the shelf cannot: a seasonal campaign, a how-to-use tip, a launch that has not reached every store yet. In perfumery the window matters more than in the other two, because it is the only part of the store that talks to someone who has not come in yet. One well-placed, well-programmed screen does more than four scattered without an owner. I have not measured this by store type, and it depends heavily on footfall.

What role does retail media play here?

It is the part that draws most interest and calls for most care. Brands pay to appear on in-store screens and the venue monetises space it already owns. In parapharmacy and perfumery it fits naturally, because almost everything sold is branded and brands already invest in the shelf. In a clinic it is a different conversation: there is a patient, a relationship of trust and regulation that does not take shortcuts.

What makes this environment different is that you know who you are talking to. We know who is waiting (through an anonymised profile), what they need and the context they are in. That lets a brand deliver its message to the right audience at the right moment, as a personalised message and not a loop broadcast to a mass audience. It is more relevant for the brand and less noise for the person waiting.

One piece of context, with its quality label. In November 2025 AdKaora (Mondadori Group) published a white paper on retail media in pharmacies in Italy. It comes from a vendor of that service and uses its own network data, so I read it as a deployment without independent measurement: useful to see which categories they pitch (over-the-counter medicines, personal care, supplements), not proof that it works the same elsewhere. I take the idea, not the figures.

What we add is what that report leaves out: to sell advertising you must be able to show the screen was on and the ad ran. Retail media without maintenance or a proof-of-play report is a promise. That is the Galernai part: screens that work, content scheduled per location and a report of what played and when.

What rules apply before you schedule content?

Few people ask and nearly everyone should. In Spain, advertising of human medicines is governed by Royal Decree 1416/1994. As consolidated, advertising to the public needs prior approval from the health authority, only medicines expressly classed as advertisable may be promoted, it must be clear that it is advertising and carry a prompt to consult a pharmacist, and prescription medicines cannot be advertised to the public. This describes Spain only.

It affects any pharmacy or parapharmacy screen that shows a medicine, and any clinic content that touches a product. Regional rules and those for medical devices and cosmetics have their own requirements, so each campaign should be checked with a regulatory adviser. My working rule: keep brand, wellbeing and cosmetics content apart from anything that touches medicines, and have the owner approve the latter before it is scheduled.

How does this work across many locations?

The problem stops being the screen and becomes maintenance. A chain of clinics or perfumeries has many sites with one or two screens, no technicians, and a professional with no time for a black screen. That is why a single point of contact, a public portal to open incidents and remote management weigh more here than elsewhere. At Galernai we work with more than 150 health and beauty locations, across clinics and perfumeries, and that is where you see whether a project survives day-to-day operation.

Where do you start?

Look at your business from the street and from the counter. What should someone read in the ten seconds before walking in, and what while they wait? Those two answers are the brief for a store diagnostic. And if retail media is on the table, the first honest question: what would a brand pay for that glance, and what would you have to show them to collect it?

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