There was a time when the neighborhood hardware store was simply a place where one went to buy a box of nails or seek advice about a leaky faucet from someone who had actually fixed one. That time, it seems, has passed.

RedVest Media, the retail media network that Ace Hardware introduced in 2025, is preparing to make its formal debut at the upfront presentations later this week, armed with an expanded suite of measurement and audience-targeting capabilities. The network now counts DoorDash, Pacvue, Epsilon and In-Store Marketplace among its corporate partners — a roster that suggests the locally owned hardware store has become something rather more complicated than a repository for duct tape and garden hoses.

The DoorDash arrangement, which was announced last year, allows brands to advertise storefronts within the delivery app, with items shipped from more than 4,000 Ace locations. New sponsored ad formats are designed to catch customers while they are building an order, in what the industry has come to call the consideration phase. (Whether customers were previously crying out to be influenced while shopping for caulk is a question the announcement did not address.)

Perhaps more significantly for advertisers weary of the slow demise of third-party cookies, RedVest is offering access to what it calls verified first-party data — purchase histories, loyalty program information and shopping habits — that allows brands to target segments like do-it-yourself homeowners or recent home buyers. The measurement tools promise to connect ad spending to actual purchases, whether those transactions happen online or inside a physical store.

Among the newer offerings is something called Weather-Triggered Programmatic, which serves ads based on local conditions, and Category Driver Campaigns, which pool investment across multiple brands around seasonal moments. An audience library is being developed and will roll out through the remainder of 2027.

Some capabilities, the company noted, may require additional investment — a disclosure that hardware store customers, at least, will find refreshingly familiar.

Original story published in MediaPost: "Ace Hardware's Media Arm Releases Measurement, Audience Features"