Home Depot expands Orange Apron Media with new partnerships and certification program

Home Depot used its third annual InFronts event on April 21 to add new partnerships, onsite offerings and a certification program to Orange Apron Media, the retail media network it launched in 2024. For associates, that matters because more sponsored content tied to Home Depot’s digital shelves can change what customers notice before they reach the aisle, which products get extra attention and how often store teams have to explain why one item is suddenly getting pushed.

Orange Apron Media says it offers both self-service and custom advertising, with onsite and offsite placements. Its onsite display ads can appear on home, category and product listing pages, and the network says it reaches 198 million individual customers. The company also says it has about 3.5 billion annual site visits and about 1.6 billion annual transactions, a scale that gives vendors a stronger reason to fight for visibility inside Home Depot’s shopping flow.

The certification program points to a more structured business around advertising, measurement and partner management. That does not just affect the media team. It ripples into merchandising, inventory planning and store execution, where campaigns only work if the featured product is on hand, the signage is right and associates know enough about the item to answer pro and DIY questions quickly. In a Home Depot store, that can mean more coordination between the back room, the department lead and the digital team when an online promotion starts pulling traffic into a category.

InFronts has moved quickly from launch to a more developed sales and education platform. Home Depot introduced Orange Apron Media at the inaugural summit in 2024. The 2025 event added Return on Marketing Objectives, or ROMO, as a broader way to judge campaign effectiveness. By the third annual summit in Atlanta, Home Depot was linking advertisers to Reddit campaigns and Pinterest audiences, extending Orange Apron Media beyond owned channels and into a fuller media operation. Mandy Hunsicker Adams said after the summit that it reflected the trust built over time, which fits a network trying to become a routine part of how brands reach home-improvement shoppers.