Retail Media
Paid MediaAlso: Retail Media Network · RMN
Quick definition
Retail media is advertising bought inside a retailer's own digital properties, like sponsored product listings on Amazon or banner ads on the Woolworths app. Retailers sell this space using their first-party purchase data to target shoppers who are actively browsing or buying, often at the exact moment of decision.
How it varies across Australia
Retail media spend in Australia is growing faster than most other paid channels, driven by the major grocery and hardware retailers building out their own ad networks. Adoption is heaviest among consumer packaged goods brands and lightest among service businesses with no retail shelf presence.
See paid media performance across Australian industries →What it actually means
Retail media is what happens when a retailer realises the most valuable thing it owns isn't the shelf, it's the data about who walks past the shelf. Woolworths, Coles, Amazon and Bunnings all sit on purchase history that Google and Meta can only guess at. They've turned that into an advertising product.
The pitch to brands is simple. Instead of running a display ad and hoping it eventually influences a conversion, you pay to appear in the exact search result or app screen where someone is deciding what to buy. That's a fundamentally different moment than a paid social impression, closer to search engine marketing (SEM) than to brand awareness.
The catch is measurement. Every retail media network has its own reporting dashboard, its own definition of a conversion event, and no shared standard. Comparing return on ad spend (ROAS) between a Coles campaign and a Meta campaign is comparing two different accounting systems, not two channels on equal footing. Attribution here is closed by design. The retailer controls the data and has an incentive to make its own channel look good.
Brands that treat retail media as a bolt-on to their existing paid strategy tend to overspend on it, because the reporting looks clean and the click-to-purchase path looks short. It's a real channel, but it needs its own accountability, not a shared spreadsheet with your paid search numbers.
Retail media works because the shopper is already holding their wallet. That's a different moment to a scroll on Instagram, and it should be measured differently too.
How it shows up
Retail media shows up as sponsored product tiles at the top of Amazon or Woolworths search results, banner placements on a grocery app's home screen, and increasingly as video ads inside the checkout flow. It also shows up in your media plan as a line item with its own dashboard, separate login, and reporting that rarely reconciles with your Google Analytics or CRM data.
The Australian context
The Australian retail media market is concentrated around a handful of major players. Woolworths runs Cartology, Coles runs Coles 360, and both compete directly with Amazon Ads for consumer packaged goods budgets. Because grocery retail here is a duopoly, brands have less room to negotiate than they'd have in a fragmented market like the United States, and rate cards reflect that.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has flagged retail media as an area of interest given the same retailers that sell shelf space also sell the data about who shops that shelf. Expect more scrutiny here than in less concentrated retail markets.
Where people get this wrong
Retail Media vs Programmatic Advertising
| Retail Media | Programmatic Advertising | |
|---|---|---|
| Where ads appear | Inside a retailer's own site or app | Across the open web via ad exchanges |
| Data source | Retailer's own purchase history | Third-party and behavioural signals |
| Reporting control | Owned by the retailer, closed system | Owned by the advertiser or their DSP |
| Best suited to | Brands sold through that retailer | Any brand with a broader audience target |
Related terms
Common questions
What is an example of retail media?
A sponsored product listing that appears at the top of Amazon search results, or a banner on the Woolworths app home screen promoting a specific brand. Both are paid placements sold by the retailer using its own shopper data.
Is retail media worth it for small brands?
It depends on shelf presence and margin. If your product isn't stocked by the retailer, there's nothing to advertise into. If it is stocked, retail media can work well for smaller brands because it puts you next to established competitors at the moment of decision.
How is retail media different from paid social or paid search?
Paid social and paid search reach people wherever they are on the open web. Retail media only reaches people already inside a specific retailer's site or app, usually while they're actively shopping. The intent is higher but the audience is smaller and the platform is closed.
Why is retail media growing so fast in Australia?
Major grocery and hardware retailers have realised their purchase data is a sellable asset. With a concentrated retail market, a small number of networks can capture a large share of consumer packaged goods advertising budgets without much competitive pressure on price.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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