Harbolnas 2025: Where Retail Media Takes the Spotlight

If you think every Double Digit sale across Southeast Asia follows the same formula, you are probably wrong. In Indonesia it’s blended with a sense of national pride. Harbolnas (Hari Belanja Online Nasional) is a moment where every brand competes for the same audience, attention, and ad space.

What started as a modest digital event back in 2012 (12/12/12) with a handful of e-commerce players like Lazada, quickly became a major collaboration among various e-commerce platforms, banks, and logistics partners, creating a vibrant stage for businesses to connect with millions of shoppers. In this environment, Retail Media has emerged as the solution giving brands the precision, data, and placement they need to stay visible when everyone else is shouting the same message.

Harbolnas in Indonesia 2025: What We Could Expect

This year’s Harbolnas comes with a theme “Declare Love for the Archipelago” shaping how brands show up and how consumers shop. The spotlight is firmly on local brands, thriving SMEs, and Indonesia’s digital-first economy. For marketers, understanding this year’s theme is key to connecting emotionally with shoppers who take pride in buying homegrown. When the season itself celebrates national pride and local craftsmanship, the brands that weave that message into their storytelling will stand out far more than those relying purely on discounts.

And there’s good reason to show up strong. Harbolnas 2024 recorded Rp31.2 trillion in transactions, growing at a steady 21.4% year-on-year, and engaging close to 100 million shoppers across the country. The event has become the heartbeat of Indonesia’s digital economy, where trust in online shopping and enthusiasm for local products continue to surge.

At the centre of it all is mobile, driving discovery, conversation, and conversion. Indonesia now ranks 4th in global smartphone usage, with over 95% of internet users accessing platforms via mobile and spending an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media. That’s one of the highest engagement rates in the world. No surprise then that social platforms and retail media networks have become the engines powering every Harbolnas campaign.

E-Commerce Platforms Making Harbolnas 2025 Buzzing

Here is a quick look at some of the key players in this year’s event:

Platform	Specialty/Strengths	Notable Features
Shopee	Leading marketplace known for its dynamic festival events and a wide product range.	Flash sales, in-app games, and interactive live events keep users engaged.
Tokopedia	High local reach & ROI for the sellers	Marketing solutions, collaborative advertisement formats, and hyperlocal engagement tools.
Lazada	Regional powerhouse enabling cross-border commerce across SEA.	Sponsored products, diverse product categories, strong logistics integrations.
Blibli	Trusted platform for SMEs and established brands alike. Guarantees the products sold in their platform are original.	Promotional tool variations and good reputation in terms of fulfilment.
TikTok Shop	Fast-rising force in social commerce by influencer and live-streaming.	Livestream selling, influencer partnerships, and short-form video commerce.
Akulaku	The fintech-driven commerce and payment platform.	BNPL-focused ads, integrated financial services.

What Shapes Shopping Behaviour During Harbolnas?

1. Social Commerce: Here is the stat – social commerce constitutes 25% of Indonesia’s total e-commerce volume. Social media isn’t just for scrolling. Right now, it’s the place where discovery and purchases happen. Influencers and creator buzz turn likes into real shopping.
   • Tokopedia & TikTok Shop Integration: With this merger, everything from ads to sales now happens under one roof. All campaigns, listings, and performance can be managed within TikTok Ads Manager and TikTok Shop Seller Center. For brands and creators, this means less friction and more control, turning discovery into purchase directly through TikTok’s social environment.
2. Live Commerce: Live streams are taking center stage. From product demos to flash deals, real-time shopping creates excitement that static listings just can’t match, making viewers feel part of the moment and ready to buy instantly.
3. Seamless User Interface on Mobile: Almost everyone shops on their phone, so speed and simplicity matter. A smooth, fast-loading app with easy navigation and one-click checkout keeps shoppers coming back for more.
4. Solid Technical Infrastructure: With millions of people shopping at the same time, reliability is everything. Platforms need to stay fast, stable, and glitch-free because one bad experience can quickly break trust.
5. Value-Driven Shopping: Indonesians are savvy bargain hunters, especially during festive seasons. Deep discounts, installment options, and bundled deals offer savings and convenience.

Key Takeaway: Data-Driven Advertising

Retail media networks enable brands to create timely, contextual, and personalized campaigns that capture users with surgical preciseness in a competitive and cluttered marketplace. This enables brands to convert Harbolnas from a discount-driven event into one of real strategic importance for long-term growth by leveraging insights from browsing behavior, engagement, and purchase history.

Navigating The Challenges

While Harbolnas is a huge opportunity for brands and retailers, it also means some unique challenges that can badly affect performance and customer experience if not handled properly.

• Checkout friction: Slow loading, poor UI, or payment failures, especially on sudden traffic spikes can make mobile experiences go bad. These affect conversion rates and discourage first-time shoppers from coming back. Ensuring a seamless and reliable checkout flow will be one of the ways to convert such traffic into long-term customers.
  • Solution: Brands can minimize friction at checkout by stress-testing mobile platforms in advance of peak days, simplifying the flow in payment, and offering multiple options such as e-wallets and BNPL.

• Ad Inventory Congestion During 11.11: As most brands ramp up their spend, ad inventory costs spike and ad fatigue becomes a real challenge.
  • Solution: Marketers can balance this by starting early, dialing up precision targeting and prioritizing the retargeting of warm audiences with high intent through retail media networks or first-party data.

• Targeting and creative differentiation: The “double-date discount” culture 11.11, 12.12 has led shoppers to expect deep deals and great creative experiences. In such an environment, even a slight slip in timing, messaging, or relevance takes away much-needed edge for brands.
  • Solution: Creative differentiations are essential to cut through ad wear; brands that have a more genuine storytelling process, local campaigns, and personalization of messaging tend to perform better.

• Logistics and Last-Mile Delivery as Experience Drivers: Indonesia’s vast geography makes timely and reliable delivery a major challenge during Harbolnas, as surging order volumes often strain logistics networks.
  • Solution: You can strengthen partnerships with local logistics providers, use real-time tracking and inventory visibility, and communicate proactively with customers.

Omnichannel Strategies that Work

1. Seamless experience across devices & channels: Start on mobile, user begins on mobile app, abandons cart, get reminded by email, finish on the web, pick up in-store. Integrate channels like in-store staff access same user profile/cart, or allow geolocation of store, QR codes for app login in-store.

2. Live commerce and social integration: Use live streams linked to social and app platforms for instant buying showcasing deals and let viewers purchase instantly and integrate live-stream offers with in-store or pickup options.

3. Channel-specific add-ons with unified goal: Offer app-exclusive flash deals, in-store coupons, and link marketplace listings to physical stores.

4. Real-time inventory & fulfilment management: Sync inventory online and offline to avoid stockouts and give real-time notifications to customer when ready.

5. Marketing orchestration: Personalize messaging with customer data across all channels and use remarketing to retarget via email or WhatsApp with messages that instill urgency

6. Post-purchase cross-channel follow-up: Follow up post-purchase smoothly via preferred channels and for in-store pickup, ensure staff recognizes the order, honors the discount, and ensures smooth handover.

In Summary

Harbolnas continues to show how Indonesia leads digital innovation in Southeast Asia, showcasing how to mix mobile-first behavior, social commerce, and local brand storytelling into one of the region’s most dynamic online festivals. The best practices for marketers in Indonesia and across SEA are clear: plan early, prioritize mobile and live commerce, data personalize your messaging, and seamlessly build omnichannel experiences that connect awareness to conversion.

More importantly, these insights are very transferable to emerging markets, where the adoption of smartphones, social-driven shopping, and value-conscious consumers shape the future of e-commerce. Harbolnas conveys much more than just a sales playbook; it’s an insight into how digital ecosystems across the region glue together technology, creativity, and culture to drive meaningful growth.

Ready to make the most of the festive rush? Let’s talk about building a strategy that wins attention before, during, and after the big moments.