Hammer time: All eyes on Bunnings as retail media era begins
Bunnings’ long anticipated foray into the booming Australian retail media market with the launch of Hammer Media has sparked fresh conversations about competition, innovation, and the potential reshaping of marketing budgets.
Retail media, forecast to reach approximately $2.8bn in Australia by 2027, is seeing explosive growth, beyond legacy players Woolworths’ Cartology and Coles’ 360, underscored by several recent launches including Priceline Pharmacy, Petbarn, and Australia Post.
The big question the Australian sector now faces is: how many retail media networks can the market sustainably support?
Bunnings’ entry with Hammer Media aims to capture supplier advertising budgets by leveraging its substantial presence across in-store radio, emails, social media, website, and new in-store screens.
With access to over 14 million monthly website visitors and extensive in-store traffic, Hammer Media offers suppliers highly targeted campaigns using coveted first party data, with an omnichannel approach building through external platforms like YouTube.
This digital push promises precise demographic targeting, especially among the coveted 18-34 year old segment, at a significantly lower cost compared to other media channels. Bunnings has had the new generation of DIYers in its sights for some time, with channels like TikTok, and innovative brand activations like the Bunnings Rave delivering a highly engaged younger customer base.
The hardware giant’s investment in digital infrastructure—300 LED screens across 150 stores—is indicative of retail media’s shift towards measurable, targeted advertising within physical spaces. Suppliers can adjust creative messaging based on time, location, and consumer demographics, suggesting a future where budgets traditionally reserved for television and print shift towards these more agile, measurable, last touchpoint channels.
The ACCC will no doubt be keeping a weather eye on the nation’s favourite sausage slingers. Suppliers could face increasing pressure; Bunnings’ market dominance could be seen as a risk they’ll be strongarmed into additional spending on top of their traditional trade agreements into the retail media offering.
With Bunnings’ near-monopoly in the category, brands might be compelled to invest heavily so as not to jeopardise in-store placements.
The big ambitions of Hammer Media’s extensive offerings—spanning multiple channels, many yet untested as sales channels for partners—may risk overextension.
This ambitious “everything-to-everyone” approach raises questions about whether Bunnings can sustain demand across all these new channels.
There’s also the customer trust issue. Bunnings is one of Australia’s best loved brands, both through its consumer and direct-to-trade offerings, and enjoys significant consumer trust and brand loyalty.
There is a tendency in retail media transformation for CEOs, CFOs and boards – captivated by the vision of 90% margins and outsized estimates of the potential revenue pool – to push for the fastest route to unlocking as much revenue as possible across owned assets, a move Angus Frazer, co-founder at owned media consultants Sonder memorably refers to as “tattooing the baby.”
Bunning’s challenge will be to balance the drive towards aggressive monetisation through selling as much advertising inventory as possible, with the need to protect the customer experience. With Bunnings’ overall revenue up 3.2% to $10.28 billion in the half year to December, there’s arguably enough fat for the chain to roll out its new capabilities gradually.
Hammer Media’s entry is undoubtedly significant, marking a major milestone in the evolution of Australian retail media. However, its ultimate success hinges on delivering measurable value—not simply scale and ambition. The risk, as one insider put it, is when you have Hammer Media, everything looks like a nail.
The retail market sector’s future lies in balance: between growth and overextension, competition and consolidation, and commercial success versus consumer trust.
God help us with these market monopolies.
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Is it just me or is anyone else concerned that the explosion of retail media ‘opportunities’ is effectively defunding mainstream / legacy media and the journalists they employ?
At this rate we’ll be left with the ABC and the internet.
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….and that’s a bad thing?
Imagine a world where agencies have zero power and the 24yr old “Senior Account Directors” actually have to think!
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Retail media has the chance to exist because the ‘legacy’ media (and many of their journos) have managed to tarnish their legacies so much in recent years. Customers trust Bunnings et al far more than they trust the Herald Sun – why advertise with the latter instead of the former? The truly valuable, needle-moving mainstream media will survive as part of the channel mix.
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