Retail media: Brands are buying in, but not without hesitation
- Teresa Sperti
- Jun 2
- 6 min read
What brands need – and what retailers must do next.
Retail Media Networks (RMNs) are gaining traction across the Australian landscape. With the Australian retail media market reaching an estimated $2.6 billion in 2024 and forecast to grow 10 – 15% in 2025, retail brands are piling in, with a number of leading high-profile brands launching their propositions in 2025.
But while the sector is booming, the Arktic Fox and Six Degrees Executive Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus 2025 report has found that many consumer and industrial brands (suppliers) are investing and engaging with caution. Measurement shortfalls, capability gaps, and trust concerns are holding back deeper investment - posing a challenge for retailers looking to capitalise on the growing interest in retail media.
Below, we explore four key findings from our latest study from a brand perspective - and what they signal for retailers aiming to win more ad dollars and deliver better results for brand partners.
1. Brands want to invest - but confidence is wavering
Key Insight: While a third of brands plan to increase investment in retail media, the majority are either maintaining current levels or pulling back.
What’s driving this hesitancy?
A lack of trust is a central issue.
Over half (54%) of brand leaders report low levels of trust in Australian retail media networks, with the rest indicating only moderate trust. Transparency remains a key challenge — retailers are often unable to provide the level of insight brands require, within the timeframes needed. Compounding the issue is inconsistent media execution, with reports of planned activity not being delivered in-store or online as expected. Brands are also grappling with their own ability to measure return effectively, further undermining confidence in retail media investments.
Implication for retailers:
To unlock greater investment, retailers must:
Build more transparent partnerships across planning, delivery and reporting
Ensure media is executed as planned, with timely verification
Provide greater access to insights and data in a more real-time fashion and demonstrate return on spend against the brand's key business performance metrics.
2. Measurement & capability are critical gaps hampering growth
The vast majority of brands are struggling to measure return on their retail media investments and many lack the internal expertise to fully capitalise on the opportunity.
This challenge isn’t unexpected. Retail media is still commonly managed by sales or shopper marketing teams, who may not have the digital capability or cross-channel expertise required to effectively measure and report on cross-channel activity. Digital, in particular, is often a weak spot. Resource constraints also play a role — many teams are underpowered, limiting the time and attention available for building robust reporting frameworks.
Further compounding the issue is a knowledge gap around what “good” looks like. As a relatively new discipline, many brands simply haven’t been exposed to best practice approaches for measurement, benchmarking or reporting that provides insight into both short-term and long-term effectiveness to support investment decisions.
But the reporting issue is not unique to brands, many retailers too are grappling with measurement challenges of their own as they seek to develop true omnichannel reporting - to be able to deliver full-funnel reporting.
For brands like David Jones, the challenge is also magnified by their diverse portfolio of categories and brands, this presents varying buying cycles making standardisation of measurement approaches challenging.
Implication for retailers:
For retailers competing with Amazon, time is not on their side. The sophistication of the Amazon Ads ecosystem - combined with its accelerating local growth - raises the bar for what brands now expect from retail media networks including measurement and reporting. With 30% of brands already investing in Amazon Ads, the pressure is mounting.
But opportunity still exists. Retailers can fast-track their reporting and measurement maturity by partnering closely with more progressive brands that are eager to gain first-mover advantage. These forward-leaning brands can play a vital role in co-developing robust measurement frameworks and setting new benchmarks for what “good” looks like.
Retailers that move fast and build trust through measurement will be better placed to grow share of media spend before others catch up.
3. Retailer capability isn’t meeting brand expectations
Key Insight: Retailers are performing relatively well on omni-channel delivery — but are falling short in the areas brands value most: data insights, performance reporting, and test-and-learn capabilities.
As retail media networks compete for a larger share of brand media budgets, enhancing these capabilities is critical. Many brands, shaped by their experience with platforms like Google and Meta, now expect self-serve access, real-time insights, and the ability to experiment and optimise on the fly. Yet, many retail media networks still rely on manual processes and “set-and-forget” campaign execution - an approach that no longer aligns with the expectations of today’s marketers.
Global retailers are making strides in self-serve platforms, and while it’s on the radar for local players, those who move faster to empower brands - particularly smaller ones - with tools to plan, buy, and optimise in near real-time will be best placed to capture incremental spend.
While self-service capabilities within retail media are essential, retailers must think beyond just media to improve overall outcomes for brands. A critical part of the retail media experience is where the ad ultimately leads - the product detail page (PDP).
Many local retailers still make it difficult for brands to manage or update PDP content effectively. Manual processes, spreadsheet-based uploads, and siloed workflows create significant friction and lead to poor quality PDPs - undermining the very campaigns designed to drive traffic and conversion. Brands need the flexibility to be able to adapt their PDPs on the fly as part of the testing and optimisation process for campaign activity.
Implication for retailers:
To drive growth and stay competitive, retailers must:
Build or accelerate self-service capabilities
Invest in experimentation frameworks and reporting transparency
Think end-to-end when it comes to automation and self-service – the media component is a small part of the experience and empowering brands to improve the end-to-end experience will enable improved conversion and outcomes – which is good for the brand and RMN alike.
4. More networks, more complexity – but not always more value
Key insight: The study has revealed 39% of brands are now using 4 or more retail media networks.
For brands operating within categories such as health, beauty and wellness, personal care, baby, and others, the number of networks on offer increases as products are stocked across specialty retail, pharmacy, supermarkets and marketplaces which is in part driving this trend.
With small teams and flatlining budgets, teams are stretched to deliver well and maximise return from networks. As many networks are also new to market, brands are in a trialling and testing phase. Over time we anticipate brands will narrow the number of platforms they are leveraging as they seek to focus efforts on fewer, bigger, better to drive material outcomes.
Implications for retailers:
Standardisation is emerging as a key competitive differentiator
As more retail media networks enter the market, the ease with which brands can plan, buy, and measure across platforms will directly influence where media budgets flow. Fragmentation is creating friction - and brands are seeking simplification.
Automation is equally critical
Brands are not only navigating multiple retail media networks, but also juggling a growing number of eCommerce channels. This adds significant overhead to already stretched teams. Networks that reduce operational complexity through automated workflows, unified reporting, and consistent processes will stand out.
To compete effectively, retailers must:
Invest in automation to reduce manual effort and streamline execution for brands – RMNs need to remember they are now serving the supplier not the other way around.
Align on measurement and planning standards to reduce friction by partnering with others in industry
Make it easier for brands to activate at scale across multiple platforms
Retailers that remove complexity - not add to it - will be best placed to earn long-term brand investment.
Arktic Fox is partnering with retailers and brands to establish and optimise their retail media strategies.
To read the full findings of the Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus study 2025, download it here.
For an exclusive cut of retail findings from the study, download the Retail Edition here.