Retail media’s growing pains
Retail media may be the fastest-growing sector in advertising, but Australia’s market is entering a moment of reckoning. Moving from a line item on a media plan, it’s now a headline act—with nearly every major retailer launching or expanding their own network. But as the ecosystem expands, so too do the challenges. Increased scrutiny from brand partners is building, and the tension between ambition and execution is starting to show.
According to Arktic Fox and Six Degrees Executive’s Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus Report 2025, retail media is finally getting serious attention from brand marketers, but not necessarily their confidence. While networks are proliferating, trust remains conspicuously low. Not one respondent in the study said they had high trust in Australian retail media networks. That’s a red flag in a sector where collaboration and data-sharing are key to success. For many marketers, the shift in dynamic, from the retailer being the buyer to becoming a media inventory seller, is still far from resolved.
Brands are also grappling with measurement. Return on investment is murky, and many networks are still struggling to offer transparent, standardised performance reporting. Attribution remains a sticking point, particularly when retailer platforms act as both media seller and conversion gatekeeper. The study found that 96% of brands face challenges around their ability to quantify return, uplift and value from retail media spend. As a result, some marketers are questioning whether retail media is a growth channel or just another tax for distribution.
With Cartology, Woolworths operates one of the biggest retail networks in Australia.
Yet despite these trust issues, spending is accelerating. The push is driven by pressure on profitability and a fragmented digital landscape. Marketplaces and aggregators like Amazon are becoming integral to the path to purchase. With nearly one-third of brands planning to increase their investment in marketplaces over the next year, market perception of retail media is no longer just about banner ads on Woolies’ it’s increasingly embedded into a broader ecommerce strategy and sales planning.
That convergence brings its own complexity. Channel proliferation is rampant. Retailers and FMCG brands now manage upwards of four or five platforms as part of their eCommerce mix, and more are trialling emerging formats such as social commerce, quick commerce, and even conversational commerce. Retail media sits at the centre of that web, but without stronger infrastructure and clearer incentives, it risks collapsing under its own weight.
One of the biggest blind spots is organisational readiness. Only 18% of retailers report having a unified view of the customer—yet many are charging ahead with media products built on shaky foundations. As Teresa Sperti, author of the report, told Mumbrella:
“We are trying to go from building the capability to monetise first and then hopefully push it back into the business. Now, if you haven’t built that capability for yourself as a retailer, , how do you have the right to go and play and sell it to someone else?”
Adding to the scrutiny, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has called for greater transparency greater transparency from Coles and Woolworths over how their in-house media networks—Coles360 and Cartology—report media revenue and supplier participation. The recommendation comes amid industry-wide concerns about media being bundled into trade spend without clear ROI.
If retail media wants to secure its seat at the strategy table, it needs to mature fast. That means clearer measurement, smarter data handling and literacy, stronger trust, and a rethink of the brand–retailer relationship.
Otherwise, what started as the promise of performance could unravel into a story of friction and fatigue.
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