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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
Trip Report: Retail & Commerce Media Activations in Australia
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: after living outside of Australia for so long, it was kind of all up about 15 years, and coming back to live recently, I'm experiencing retail and shopping like a newcomer [00:00:15] again, and I've been keeping my eyes peeled in particular for in-store retail media experiences
[00:00:23] But really I don't need to be paying that much attention because it seems to be absolutely everywhere here. [00:00:30] Today I'm gonna be sharing my first retail media trip report, which happens to be in my hometown of Perth, Western Australia. And in a couple of weeks I'm going to be going to [00:00:45] Poland for the first time.
[00:00:46] So I'm excited to check out the local e-commerce and retail media scene there and share back to you what I'm seeing on the ground in that country. If you are familiar [00:01:00] with the Poland retail media landscape, I would love to get your tips. so please get in contact with me on the website retailmediabreakfastclub.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn if you've got some tips for me when I'm [00:01:15] in Poland.
[00:01:16] So the point here with these trip reports is I wanna be really clear, it's not to proclaim that any one country or region is doing this better because I think at, at worst that kind of [00:01:30] proclamation is terribly patronizing. At best, it doesn't account for so many social, economic, legal, and geographic differences around the world.
[00:01:44] I've written about this in [00:01:45] the past about how and why the US in-store retail media ecosystem looks so different to the UK and Europe. It is not because people have never thought of it before, it's because of all [00:02:00] of these constraints and differences culturally, socially, economically, legally, et cetera.
[00:02:07] But the point of me sharing this is actually as a way of expanding our minds about [00:02:15] what is possible in the world of retail media, some RMN inspo, if you will.
[00:02:21]
[00:02:22] Kiri Masters: So this piece, I'm going to do my best on a audio-only podcast to explain this stuff. It [00:02:30] really, it might be a bit better of an experience if you can see the visuals behind this, uh, to really tell the story.
[00:02:38] But I'm going to take a snapshot of just a few different activations. How many have I got? [00:02:45] Six. Um, this is by no means everything in the local market. I've really... It was really, like, a day or two of me going to the shopping center and seeing what was out there. Um, so there are some very [00:03:00] notable retailers in Australia that are doing interesting things that are not on this list, and that's just purely because I couldn't fit them all in.
[00:03:08] I'm gonna jump in with this quick little tour. So first of all, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and this is [00:03:15] very interesting because this is Australia's largest retail bank, and Commonwealth Bank is doing some really interesting stuff with partners. So in the branch, I saw a [00:03:30] very large in-branch digital screen right next to the ATM running ads for Commonwealth Bank products and services, but also for a car brand, Polestar.
[00:03:43] And, it [00:03:45] was very interesting. There was also a, magazine in the branch called Brighter, and that was a Commonwealth Bank produced, editorial magazine, and that had car [00:04:00] ads in it as well
[00:04:01] For other cars too. So Polestar was advertising in the branch, and then I'm just pulling up my magazine here. That was-- There's an ad for a, Hyundai ad on the back of the magazine there too, as well as ads from tourism [00:04:15] boards. the Canadian Tourism Board is doing a big campaign here at the moment, so there were some ads to visit Canada in that magazine.
[00:04:24] And so this is quite interesting because It's a type of, uh, obviously financial [00:04:30] services media networks are very established. Chase has a huge re- uh, commerce media network in the States. The card companies do, of course, as well. But I didn't see so much in-store [00:04:45] physical activations, amongst the financial services players in, in the US.
[00:04:50] So I think that this is Interesting to see on these different surfaces. So some stats here for Commonwealth Bank. They launched their own [00:05:00] media network in 2024, selling ads across in-branch screens, ATMs, its app, and the magazine, as I mentioned. They are rolling out 2,000 digital screens across the branch network.
[00:05:14] [00:05:15] And, as Australia's largest retail bank, they reach a quite a, a large number of Australians through their bank accounts and loyalty programs The second one to call out here is Coles, Coles [00:05:30] 360. So Coles is, uh, there's sort of a duopoly in Australia of supermarkets And Coles is one of those two dominant supermarket chains.
[00:05:38] So they have introduced a lot of in-screen stores, at the front of the store. I've [00:05:45] seen, quite a few of these now. There's about 600 of them now. Coles recently moved to a new provider, Broadsign, which brings in programmatic scheduling, day parting, and store-level targeting to those entrance [00:06:00] screens
[00:06:01] And of course, being a very large supermarket, Coles is relying on its loyalty program called Flybuys
[00:06:09] To segment those audiences and allow for closer ad targeting
[00:06:14] [00:06:15] Kohl's currently has in-store screens in more than 850 stores with its Kohl's 360 Impact Tool powered by Sakana ties in-store exposure to sales lift. The next one is [00:06:30] quite interesting. it is JB Hi-Fi, which is an electronics, chain specialty retailer in Australia, and this is a network that is in transition.
[00:06:40] So this is interesting to watch because JB Hi-Fi is [00:06:45] going through a, a major upgrade and transition of its in-store screens to a new provider. And so what I saw when I went into my local JB Hi-Fi was digital displays running on [00:07:00] JB's own house brand TVs running product demos and ads on essentially consumer hardware, which is what- a lot of retailers have been doing for a long time [00:07:15] Sometimes it is just run by the store manager who wants to move more units and set up a display, and they want to
[00:07:22] show a product demo of that product because they know that it moves units. That's a real use case that works, and [00:07:30] obviously a great starting point. But JB Hi-Fi is in the middle of a transition to broadsign
[00:07:37] Which will enable programmatic ad serving, central campaign management and measurement. And so this is the [00:07:45] transition that a lot of retailers are living through right now. They have that physical screen inventory, but the media network is that layer that makes it sellable to more advertisers and actually measurable as well. [00:08:00] Costco isn't scaling its RMN with legacy ad tech and manual solutions. It's leaning into a cloud-centric composable [00:08:15] stack. As part of the Costco Velocity Network, GrowthLoop empowers the retail media team to build audiences directly from the Data Cloud, enabling faster activation, [00:08:30] greater relevance, and better performance, all while maintaining privacy and governance standards.
[00:08:37] The result? Exceptional value and experience for Costco members and better ROI for [00:08:45] brand advertisers. Learn why the GrowthLoop Composable Commerce Media Solution was the right choice for Costco's Velocity Network. Visit go.growthloop.com/breakfast. [00:09:00] That's go.growthloop.com/breakfast
[00:09:05]
[00:09:06] Kiri Masters: Number four on my little tour here is the premier upscale department store, David [00:09:15] Jones, and their retail media network is called Amplify. And what I saw was in-store screens at the store entrance and in the beauty hall. So Amplify is a retail media network in [00:09:30] this premium luxury segment
[00:09:33] And what was interesting that I found out about Amplify is that there are AI cameras on select screens that are tracking views and dwell time. So interesting [00:09:45] to see that coming back. I saw actually, you know, this is like this full circle moment on the screens in David Jones, I saw Commonwealth Bank advertising.
[00:09:55] So, um, yes, there is a, a little bit of a circular economy as it [00:10:00] turns out with all of these screens. The next on my list, number five, is Australia Post. Australia Post is the national postal service, and what I saw here was a bank of parcel pickup lockers [00:10:15] out on the street, which are quite eye-catching because Australia Post brand color is this bright, vibrant red, so it's sort of hard to miss this big bank of parcel lockers to pick up your, you know, Amazon order or whatnot.
[00:10:28] And, wrapped [00:10:30] around this whole bank of parcel lockers was a massive wrap ad for Vinted, the secondhand marketplace app that has recently launched in Australia, and they're doing a huge, awareness [00:10:45] campaign around that app. Really great tie-in for Australia Post, given that everyone is collecting their Vinted orders from Australia Post
[00:10:54] I've also seen ads for Vinted on the screen, the digital screen that you use [00:11:00] when you're actually doing your order pickup. So really clever integration here, just in terms of a sort of al- alignment. But Australia Post as a media network, very, very interesting being the [00:11:15] national mail carrier and pretty ubiquitous for most, consumers every day.
[00:11:21] in a country of twenty-seven million people, we have forty-one hundred post offices with about half of those being [00:11:30] in regional or rural areas
[00:11:32] And Australia Post has started a trial of in-store screen advertising, in one state with about 60 locations under trial as well. So pretty [00:11:45] interesting to see a mail carrier, especially a, a national mail carrier, really lean into commerce media as
[00:11:54] An alternate revenue stream. And number six, wrapping up my list here, digital out of [00:12:00] home at the mall. I visited a upscale shopping center in Perth that's co-owned by the commercial property group Hawaiian, and I saw dozens of digital screens [00:12:15] throughout the mall along pedestrian footways, hung from the ceiling, installed on walls at eye level, and massive screens outside of the flagship stores, including David Jones.[00:12:30]
[00:12:30] And it was really impressive actually, just as once I started sort of keeping my eyes peeled for these screens, I realized they are absolutely everywhere. and the big player here is a company [00:12:45] called Oooh Media, as in out of home. And the whole environment operates as one coordinated media network.
[00:12:53] So Oooh Media operates Australia's largest retail out of home network, reaching forty-three [00:13:00] percent of all footfall in the country
[00:13:02] And covering venues that capture 46 cents of every retail dollar spent in shopping centers. So a lot of, um, fashion and luxury retailers [00:13:15] in this audience
[00:13:17] And it really is a local mall that is plugged into a national system. One single screen here connects to a data-targeted network spanning the whole country. So just wrapping up here, I did my [00:13:30] best to sort of explain the pictures in the piece. If you wanna check those out, um, there's a link in the show notes to the article.
[00:13:37] You can see some pictures there. And I wanted to call out, a friend of mine Adam Skinner, the [00:13:45] outgoing managing director of unified retail media Epsilon, he is leaving his post at Epsilon. He wrote a farewell post, uh, a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn recounting the various eras that he has lived through in his retail media career, [00:14:00] starting in the early days of CitrusAd, and it was a great read overall.
[00:14:04] Really, insightful, all the different sort of stages of the ecosystem that Adam has, participated in. But this line [00:14:15] really stuck out to me as I was preparing this piece. I'm gonna read this quote from Adam. "Retail media does not look the same in Sydney, London, Bangalore, Tokyo, Seoul or Paris, no matter how [00:14:30] badly a roadmap would like it to.
[00:14:33] Every one of those markets has its own structure, its own buyer behavior, its own relationship between brand and retailer, and the differences aren't cosmetic. They [00:14:45] go all the way down to the economics." So I bring that up because, like I said at the top, I don't think that this is a, 'Hey, here's some other countries or markets doing things better than you.'
[00:14:56] I don't think that there is a roadmap, but it is helpful to [00:15:00] get some outside perspective and ideas and inspiration. So I hope if you are a commerce media network, it gets your gears turning. And, uh, if it does, I'd love to crack on with this format or give it another [00:15:15] try, when I go to Poland, um, next week, and let me know what you think.
[00:15:20] Thank you for listening, and I'll catch you tomorrow
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