What Is Retail Media? A Guide for Australian Brands

If your brand sells through major retailers, chances are you’ve been asked to invest in retail media. Nearly every large retailer now operates a media network, each with its own audience, advertising products and performance claims. The category has expanded quickly, bringing new terminology, metrics and investment decisions for marketers to navigate.  

This guide answers what retail media is, how retail media networks work, how these investments compare with other media channels and what brands should establish before committing budget. 

Key Considerations for Retail Media Investment 

• The value of retail media depends on the commercial objective behind it, whether that’s driving sales, defending category share or reaching a specific shopper audience. 

• In Australia, most retail media opportunities sit within a small number of retail groups, so retailer relevance matters more than media reach alone.  

• Retail media budgets are typically reallocated rather than added, performance needs to be assessed against the activity being replaced.  

• Comparing results across retailers is difficult when each uses its own attribution window, sales definition and reporting method. 

• An independent research and measurement partner gives brands a consistent view of what retail media contributes, outside the reporting of the retailer selling it. 

What Is Retail Media? 

Retail media is a form of advertising that retailers sell to brands through their own channels, using first-party shopper data to reach consumers close to the point of purchase. Any useful retail media definition starts with the retailers’ ability to connect advertising with both purchase intent and the actual purchasing behaviour. 

Retailers built these businesses because they already possess the two assets advertisers find hardest to secure: people with an intent to purchase and a record of what those people buy. Most channels can estimate intent. A retailer can connect an ad to a sale, because it rang up the sale. Combined with the fact that advertising typically generates higher margins than the products on the shelf, these advantages have made retail media an attractive growth engine for major retail groups, which is why nearly every large retailer now operates some form of media business.  

Retail media is often discussed alongside trade and shopper marketing because the budgets can come from similar places and the conversations often involve the same retailer account teams. However, they serve different purposes. Trade marketing spend pays for shelf position, promotions and other activities designed to increase product visibility and sales within the retail environment. Retail media pays for advertising that helps brands reach relevant shoppers. Put simply, trade spend buys placement, while retail media buys a shopper’s attention. 

Understanding how these advertising opportunities are packaged, sold and measured requires a closer look at the retail media networks that sit behind them. 

How Retail Media Networks Work 

A retail media network is the advertising business a retailer builds around its shopper audience, data and media inventory. It is a business model supported by technology, rather than a piece of software the retailer buys.  

The Retailer Runs the Marketplace  

When a retailer launches a media network, it starts selling advertising to brands that sell through its retail channels. 

Three parties, three roles: The retailer provides the audience and controls the available inventory, pricing and buying rules. The brand purchases the advertising space, while the shopper sees the ad. 

A retailer-controlled marketplace: Unlike an open advertising exchange, where brands can place ads across thousands of websites and apps, retail media lets brands advertise within a retailer’s own channels and reach its shoppers. The retail media platform acts as the self-serve tool for brands to find available placements, set budgets and book advertising. 

First-Party Shopper Data 

Retailers can connect what they know about their shoppers with what those shoppers actually buy, giving them a level of visibility that most other media channels cannot offer. 

Connecting advertising to purchases: Loyalty programme and transaction records can link an ad impression to a purchase by the same identified shopper, creating a direct connection between advertising exposure and sales.  

Reporting on sales: That closed loop allows a network to report on purchases rather than stopping at metrics such as clicks or impressions. The quality of that reporting depends on how well the underlying first-party customer data is collected, connected and modelled. 

Where Retail Media Ads Appear 

Retail media advertising now extends well beyond the retailer’s own website and app.  

Onsite: Sponsored products and display banners appear on the retailer’s website and app along with the products shoppers are already browsing. 

Offsite: Retailer shopper data can be used to target advertising across other publishers, social platforms and connected TV environments. 

In-store: Digital screens carry advertising at the entrance, along the shelf edge and at the checkout. 

The Australian Retail Media Landscape  

Australia’s retail media market is shaped by a relatively small number of large retail groups. Each has built its own media offering around the customers, channels and data within its retail ecosystem. The result is a market made up of distinct networks rather than one standardised retail media marketplace. 

For brands planning retail media spend, the concentration makes the market easier to evaluate. Each network, however, provides access to a different retailer audience, so the networks are not interchangeable. A brand looking to reach Woolworths shoppers, for example, needs to work through Woolworths’ own network. The value of that retail media advertising is closely tied to the shopper data and loyalty programmes behind each network, making the quality and relevance of the retailer’s audience important alongside reach and placement. 

Why Measurement Is Retail Media’s Hardest Problem 

Retail media spending is growing rapidly, but the ability to compare performance across networks has not kept pace. Different measurement approaches make it difficult for brands to assess results consistently and understand where retail media is creating incremental value. 

Retail media is attracting more investment from advertisers. According to IAB Australia’s Retail and Commerce Media State of the Nation 2026 report, 63% of active buyers increased spend on retailers’ own websites and apps over the past year, while 65% increased spend on retailer-powered advertising outside those channels. Nearly half of this investment was reallocated from other channels, with trade retail budgets and traditional advertising being the largest sources. Because brands are moving money from existing budgets, retail media need a reliable way to demonstrate stronger outcomes than the activities it displaced. 

Yet according to the same research, 73% of active buyers identified inconsistent metrics and definitions as their biggest measurement challenge, while 59% reported difficulty measuring ROAS or ROI. Retailers recognise the issue as well. Only 22% described their measurement offering as advanced, compared with 47% who said it was still developing. For teams running retail media marketing, this often means comparing reports built on different criteria, which fall into four areas: 

• Different attribution windows: One network may count a sale that occurs within 14 days of an ad impression, another within 30 days. Yet the results are compared as though they measure the same thing. 

• Different definitions of a sale: Some networks count any purchase within a category after exposure to an ad, while others count only the advertised item. This can significantly change the reported outcome. 

• Incrementality is rarely reported: Most reports show sales that happened after an ad was served, but not whether the ad drove those sales. 

• The seller measures its own results: The same business selling the media also reports on its performance. This is not inherently dishonest, but it does mean the findings are not independently verified. An external perspective, supported by advertising intelligence, can provide another way to assess campaign performance. 

How to Build a Retail Media Strategy: What to Settle Before You Brief a Network 

The most important decisions in a retail media programme should be made before any network is contacted. Each network arrives with its own recommendations and measurement framework and if the brand hasn’t settled what it wants, the seller will. 

• What is the spend for? Growing an established product and launching a new one require different strategies, different audiences and different measures of success. The objective decides which network, which format and which number counts.  

• Which networks reach your target shoppers? The largest network is not always the right one. The best fit depends on where your target customers actually shop. A hardware brand and a pharmacy brand, for example, are likely to prioritise different retail media networks based on where their categories are sold and where their shoppers buy. 

• How will performance be measured? Sorting out measurement differences after a campaign is much harder. So, review the attribution windows, sales definitions and reporting methodologies before signing contracts, while there is still room to align expectations. 

• What is the baseline for success? A control region, holdout audience or pre-campaign benchmark provides a point of comparison against which results can be assessed. Without this, the only yardstick is the network’s own reporting. 

• How does retail media connect to brand health? Retail media can demonstrate whether advertising influenced sales, but it does not fully explain how perceptions of the brand have changed over time. Brand measurement should therefore be considered alongside performance measurement from the outset. 

Retail media reports on transactions, but those sales figures do not show how advertising may have changed brand perception or consideration over time. Brand measurement can provide that view alongside performance measurement from the outset. 

Decide how you will measure success before you start buying. Set the objective, agree on the measures and establish a baseline outside the network. The network can report the sales it attributes to your advertising, but the brand needs its own measurement to understand what retail media actually delivered. Without that, you are relying on the seller to assess the value of its own media.

Get Retail Media Right with Material 

Retail media is now a standard part of an Australian media plan. The hard part was never getting access; it’s proving what the spend gives back.  

Material works on the measurement and insights side, rather than selling or booking media. That means we have no stake in which network gets the budget. We bring an understanding of your customers, brand measurement and analytics to establish a baseline outside the network. If you want to understand what retail media is really adding to your marketing, talk to our Australia team.