Retail media is the fastest-growing ad channel in Australia and most brands are spending into it blind. It is the one channel where closed-loop attribution lets you actually know if an impression made a sale. Most brands still refuse to look.
The retailers can show you exactly whether the impression made a sale. The scandal is that most brands are spending into it without ever asking to see.
The Take: Retail media is Australia's fastest-growing ad category, and the one place in the budget where you don't have to guess. The retailer can see whether your ad turned into a sale in their own till. Most brands still spend into it on reflex, take the retailer's dashboard at face value and never open the envelope.
I have sat on the brand side, signing the purchase order to keep a buyer happy. I have sat on the agency side, taking that money and quietly hoping nobody asked the hard question. So here it is, asked plainly. Most of the spend going into Coles 360, Cartology and Amazon Ads right now is not a considered call. It is a reflex. Everyone else is doing it, the buyer wants it, so the cheque goes out.
Here is what makes the whole thing so maddening. This is a rare corner of the ad market. You do not have to guess. The retailer holds both the ad inventory and the till. They can trace whether an impression turned into a sale inside their own store. Closed-loop attribution, they call it. For years marketers have wanted a line item with results they could actually verify. Now that exists, and most are still not checking.
Just how big has retail media gotten in Australia?
Retail media is forecast to hit A$2.3 billion in Australia in 2026, growing 19.5% and outpacing every other line item in the ad market. It's on track to overtake total TV ad revenue by 2028.
The scale here is not small. WPP Media forecasts the Australian ad market to grow 7.4% in 2026 to A$31.1 billion, and retail advertising is the single biggest driver of that growth. A category that barely registered a few years ago is set to pass the medium that defined advertising for half a century. When something expands that fast, the budget follows the momentum. People spend because it is growing, not because it has earned the budget.
Australia's retail media forecast for 2026: A$2.3 billion. Growing faster than any other line in the ad market and on track to pass total TV revenue by 2028.
Who actually benefits from the closed-loop data here, and who bothers to check it?
The retailer benefits first, by default. Coles 360's ad income climbed 10.3% in the first half of FY26, and Cartology and Coles 360 combined are closing in on A$1 billion a year in ad revenue, and that money comes straight out of brand marketing budgets.
The retailer sells the placement, runs the campaign and hands back the results. That is not a conspiracy. It is ordinary commercial incentive. If you were the one selling the placement and writing the result, you would frame it kindly too. Closed-loop attribution is a genuine strength. The retailer can trace the sale. That strength only pays off if you check it against your own figures, and most brands never do. They take the dashboard at face value, nod and renew.
In the US, Amazon commands roughly 79.7% of retail media ad spend, and it is drawing local Australian dollars the same way.
Sources: WPP Media 2026 forecast via B&T, Coles Group H1 FY26 results via Mi3, eMarketer via the FAQ on Amazon advertising.
Is this actually working for your brand, or just keeping the buyer happy?
That is a question this category can actually answer, unlike most other line items. New Rebellion's benchmark data suggests most Australian brands still are not answering it. Roughly 1 in 9 Australian businesses (10.9%) score below 50 on Acquisition Performance, the dimension covering paid effectiveness. Most already have the measurement capability. The test is whether that capability gets used.
Reading the receipt means putting one binary question to every dollar spent. Would the sales disappear if the spend stopped, or would they have landed regardless. If nothing moved when the spend stopped, that money was buying shelf presence, not performance. The two are not the same line item. Shelf presence carries commercial value in its own right. It is not return on ad spend, though most brands book it as if it were.
Methodology note: the Acquisition Performance figure is drawn from New Rebellion's benchmark dataset of Australian businesses across 70 industry verticals, scored 0 to 100 on paid and organic channel effectiveness. This is a directional signal on market-wide measurement maturity, not a retail-media-specific metric. See How We Score for the full methodology.
So what should you actually do about the spend?
Treat the retailer's report as an opening claim, never the final answer.
First, pull the closed-loop figures into your own systems, next to your own numbers. Look at incrementality, not the last-click figure. That's the whole point of spending somewhere the sale is genuinely traceable.
Second, set the budget to what you learn, not to what the buyer expects. If it's genuinely earning margin, put more behind it. If it's really a shelf-access cost, label it that way, cap it and stop reporting it as performance media.
Third, build a habit of checking this each quarter instead of renewing on autopilot. None of this requires an accounting degree. Do you know how much this channel makes you? Do you know how much you spend on it? We can work back from there.
Without answers to those two, you are guessing. Guessing that pays off is luck, not a strategy. Luck is not something you can repeat on command.
The category finally gave you the numbers. Go and look at them.
We have measured a lot of Australian businesses, and the pattern here is not subtle. The ones that win know exactly what each line item returns. The ones losing money spend because something is trending upward, not because it has earned the budget. Retail media is about to become the biggest test of that split, because it is the first place in years where the answer is genuinely there for the taking.
This is not a channel where the data is murky and you are forced to guess. The retailer can hand you the answer. Most brands are refusing to open the envelope.
So if you are going to pay the retail media tax, and plenty of you should, at least read the receipt. The channel finally put the answer in reach. Refusing to look at it is a choice, and it is the wrong one. Want to see where your paid spend actually sits against your industry? Start with NR Studio.
Frequently asked questions
What is closed-loop attribution in retail media?
It's the ability to trace an ad impression directly to a sale in the retailer's own point-of-sale data, because the retailer owns both the ad inventory and the till. Coles 360, Cartology and Amazon Ads all offer this, which makes retail media one of the few channels where you can genuinely know if the spend worked.
Is retail media spend in Australia actually worth it?
It depends on whether you're measuring incrementality rather than taking the retailer's dashboard at face value. If turning the spend off would cost you the sales, it's working. If nothing changes, you're paying a shelf-access cost and should size it accordingly.
How fast is retail media growing compared to other ad categories in Australia?
Retail media is forecast to grow 19.5% in 2026 to A$2.3 billion. That's the fastest pace of any category in the Australian ad market, and it's on track to overtake total TV ad revenue by 2028.
Should small and mid-sized brands bother with retail media, or is it only for major FMCG players?
Any brand selling through a major retailer faces the same buyer pressure to spend, regardless of size. The discipline is the same at any scale. Read the closed-loop data, ask the incrementality question and size the spend to what you can prove it does.