Ace Hardware adds influencer, DoorDash and weather features as it builds out a retail media strategy

Retail Media Landscape // September 2, 2026 Ace Hardware adds influencer, DoorDash and weather features as it builds out a retail media strategy By Mitchell Parton Ivy Liu Almost one year into its existence, Ace Hardware’s retail media network, RedVest Media, just announced a slate of new features for advertisers as part of an upfront event last week.

The new features include incrementality measurement functions for off-site media; social amplification and influencer marketing capabilities; an advertising partnership with DoorDash; and weather-triggered programmatic advertising, among others. Most are available now to advertisers.

A new audience library, allowing brands to target different customer segments, is being built out through next year. RedVest Media launched last October and is now working to meet its vendors’ and advertisers’ standards for how they want to run campaigns and how their consumers are discovering new products.

The network taps into the hardware co-op’s more than 80 million loyalty members, more than 5,300 store locations in the U. S. and about 9,000 stores globally. “We’re expanding with intention,” Molly Hjelm, corporate vp and head of RedVest Media at Ace Hardware, told Modern Retail.

She said the company is more focused on growing national brands than other retailers who may also be balancing the needs of their third-party marketplaces — Ace Hardware doesn’t have one — or stronger private labels. “It can feel like in retail media, everybody’s racing to make big announcements,” Hjelm said.

“In our case, we don’t feel that urgency, but we do feel like we want to make sure that our toolkit is as valuable as possible, especially to our endemic community.” Hjelm said she expects vendors to be most excited about the new insights capabilities, which leverage control groups to measure what would’ve happened without a certain campaign.

Advertisers can also see who converted without having bought any of the brand’s products as far back as two years, as well as data on Ace Hardware’s wholesale purchases. “Everybody’s very interested in understanding the true incrementality that would not have happened absent the media,” Hjelm said.

RedVest’s work in the social space includes a partnership with Influential, a Publicis company that matches brands to creators. Ace’s advertisers can now tap into a network of Ace-vetted influencers that they can use to build campaigns and amplify those messages through Meta, TikTok and Pinterest.

The company also announced new social media features that let brands measure social campaigns via RedVest Media and let Ace’s social channels amplify their content. Hjelm said in the hardware space, particularly, creators can help inspire people to complete DIY projects.

“We did not have any social elements in our portfolio, even though we had a significant amount of programmatic off-site, but we know that the landscape of customer trust is shifting from brands and brand content to creators,” Hjelm said.

“This is coming on the heels of a lot of feedback we received from vendors who are saying their marketing is shifting in a big way nationally to social.” The DoorDash partnership allows advertisers to engage with customers on Ace Hardware’s storefront on DoorDash.

It comes as the company has found that 91% of people shopping Ace via DoorDash have never stepped foot in an Ace Hardware store, according to Hjelm. She said DoorDash serves different customers with more urgent needs for products such as propane or firewood. “Rarely do they go to a retailer’s e-commerce platform to place those buys,” Hjelm said.

“By making advertising solutions available through DoorDash, we are expanding opportunities to grow e-commerce penetration for these brands.”

Finally, the new slate of features also includes weather-triggered programmatic advertising, where a campaign can automatically switch to new messaging centered around events such as rainfall or snowfall or even air clarity and EV index. Hjelm said this is most relevant to brands that sell items like power tools or snow equipment.

But even grass seed brands, for example, could use it to reach shoppers after heavy rain. “Our business is highly weather-dependent, and so as customers prep for storms or for blizzards, getting that product in the hands of those customers has always been part of Ace’s strategy,” Hjelm said.

The feature allows brands “to really have relevant context for the moment that customer is experiencing,” she said. Earlier this summer, RedVest also announced a partnership with Pacvue, allowing advertisers to manage Ace Hardware campaigns alongside their investments with Amazon, Walmart and other retail media networks.

“RedVest has clearly used its first year to build a solid foundation,” said Ollie Shayer,