The idea that a snowstorm might sell more snow blowers is not, on its face, a revolutionary insight. Hardware store operators have understood this principle since roughly the invention of the snow blower. What is newer is the notion that an advertisement for snow blowers might automatically appear on your phone the moment the National Weather Service issues a winter storm warning for your ZIP code.

This is among the capabilities that Ace Hardware announced last week for RedVest Media, the retail media network it introduced last October. The network, which draws on data from more than 80 million loyalty program members and some 5,300 domestic store locations, is adding weather-triggered programmatic advertising, incrementality measurement for off-site media, social and influencer marketing tools through a partnership with Influential (a Publicis company), and an advertising arrangement with DoorDash.

"Our business is highly weather-dependent," Molly Hjelm, corporate vice president and head of RedVest Media, said in an interview. She noted that the weather feature could serve brands selling power tools, snow equipment or even grass seed. (Rain, it seems, is good for grass seed sales, though perhaps less good for the people who must spread it.)

Ms. Hjelm said the company was focused on building a complete set of tools for advertisers rather than rushing to make announcements for their own sake. "It can feel like in retail media, everybody's racing to make big announcements," she said. "In our case, we don't feel that urgency."

The DoorDash partnership addresses a customer base that Ms. Hjelm said has largely never visited a physical Ace store — 91 percent, according to company data — and tends to need items like propane or firewood with some immediacy.

RedVest also announced earlier this summer an integration with Pacvue, allowing advertisers to manage Ace campaigns alongside those running on Amazon and Walmart. Ollie Shayer, a retail media strategist at SMG, called the move "a meaningful signal of its progress."

For a cooperative of neighborhood hardware stores, the retail media business represents an attempt to monetize something it has always possessed: the knowledge of what its customers are about to fix, build or survive.

Original story published in Digiday: "Ace Hardware adds weather-triggered programmatic ads to retail media strategy"