Retail media spend keeps climbing while the ANA calls for the first shared measurement framework, admitting the numbers do not hold up. IAB Australia says buyers are asking harder questions even as Cartology and Coles 360 book double-digit growth. When the seller writes the scorecard, more spend looks like the answer.
The Take: Retail media spending keeps climbing while the industry quietly admits it cannot measure it. The advertiser body just called for a shared measurement framework, which is a polite way of saying the numbers you have been paying for do not hold up.
Follow the money: Australian buyers are pouring more in every year. IAB Australia found 63% of active buyers increased spend on retailers' own sites and apps over the past year, and 65% increased spend on retailer-powered advertising off-platform. The retailers are booking the growth. AdNews reports Woolworths' Cartology grew retail media income 19.5% and Coles 360 grew 13.5% in the year to June, both ahead of supermarket sales.
Who pays: The advertiser funds the ad then takes the retailer's own report on faith. Marketing Dive reports the ANA has, for the first time, called for a shared industry framework for retail media measurement, after finding 55% of advertisers name inconsistent standards as the top barrier to success. The referees are being bought too. The same report notes Publicis is acquiring the data platform LiveRamp for about US$2.2 billion while Nielsen is taking the ad verifier DoubleVerify private. When the seller writes the scorecard, more spend tends to look like the right answer.
Advertisers who name inconsistent measurement standards as the top barrier to retail media success, even as budgets rise (ANA)
The pattern: Rising spend is being read as proof the channel works. It is proof the channel is easy to buy and hard to check. IAB Australia has started calling this retail media's year of harder questions, and the hardest one is whether the sales credited to the ad would have happened anyway.
For Australian operators: Ask your retailer partners for log-level data rather than a summary tile and treat a refusal as an answer. Run an incremental test by switching a placement off in one region or category and watching whether sales actually move. Push for third-party verification on any retail media buy over a threshold you set, because independent measurement is the one number a seller cannot quietly shade. Hold the channel to the same bar you would demand of any other line in the budget.