Conversations around retail media in the Middle East region are maturing – and fast. What was once discussed largely as an extension of shopper marketing or e-commerce is now causing brands to rethink budgets, operating models, measurement, data partnerships and even the way teams collaborate internally.
On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East’s On The Record podcast, Ghida Batal, Head of Consumer Experiences, Arla Foods; Krinio Christaras, Head of Consumer Experiences – MENAP, Mondelēz International; and Oliver Klander, Vice President – MENA Brands, LiveRamp discuss how retail media has evolved and where it is heading in the region.
Their message was clear: the opportunity is real, but the industry needs to develop a deeper understanding of retail media networks, build collaborative and sustainable pathways, and ensure strategic discipline if it is to avoid turning retail media into just another performance dashboard.
Retail media connects brand communication with shopper behaviour, and it gives marketers access to signals that were previously difficult to reach at scale. But like any fast-growing discipline, it also brings noise, confusion and a few old habits wearing new clothes.
From fragmentation to collaboration
While it’s true that the retail media landscape in the Middle East region has grown rapidly, it’s also true that the much of the market is still finding its feet. As more retailers, platforms and partners build their own ecosystems, marketers face a familiar challenge: how to avoid recreating the same fragmentation problems that already exist across digital media.
“Retail media as a discipline has come in the Middle East, specifically over the last 24 to 36 months. It’s stratospheric, it’s been at lightning speed,” says Oliver Klander, Vice President – MENA Brands, LiveRamp. “The advent of players such as Majid Al Futtaim with Carrefour, Alshaya, and other retail networks have brought something to the region that enables access to data to improve consumer experiences and efficiency of marketing.”
Klander argues that retail media has the chance to move the market towards more connected ways of working. While closed ecosystems will continue to exist, he sees more willingness to partner across categories, platforms and industries.
Klander adds, “Anything where a single platform or a single system exists is essentially a walled garden. Retail media has got an opportunity in this region to break that down. The next 12 to 18 months are going to see more significant and divergent collaborations across multiple brands, retailers and service providers from different industries, different protocols, and with potentially non-competing consumer packaged goods (CPGs) sharing insights and data together.”
The hard truth is that the old separated pieces don’t fit the new puzzle. For many organisations, retail media is creating an internal ownership question. Does it belong to trade, shopper, media or e-commerce? The answer, increasingly, is that it cannot be neatly parked in one corner of the business.
Ghida Batal, Head of Consumer Experiences, Arla Foods, explains that the traditional structure made sense when channels were clearly separated. But once retailers began offering both inventory and audience intelligence, the boundaries became much harder to maintain.
Batal says, “Historically, the trade team owns the trade budget, trade activity and the promotion. The shopper owns the shopper activation. And everything that lived on digital channels, TV and outdoor lived within the media space. But when we started to see retailers become media networks, offer media spaces and open the gates to leveraging their data, that is when everything changed and became more fluid.”
This has forced marketing teams to look less at channel ownership and more at capability. The skills required to use retail data effectively often sit in media, while retailer relationships often sit with trade.
“We have come a long way in collaborating between media and shopper and trade,” adds Batal. “We connect together to talk about who are the prioritised retailers, and then the media team unlocks the off-site budget, and the off-site budget sits with media, but still anything that is on-site sits within trade.”
Krinio Christaras, Head of Consumer Experiences – MENAP, Mondelēz International shares that retail media works best when marketing has a strong role in connecting the full journey.
However, that does not mean the discipline can operate alone. In fact, one of its defining characteristics is that it requires different teams to pull in the same direction.
“Every organisation is set up differently,” says Christaras. “The budget may fall within trade; it may fall within media, or it may be a combination of the two. But when it actually sits under marketing, to me that makes the most sense, because marketing is uniquely positioned to be able to connect the full consumer journey.”
The danger is treating retail media as either a trade line or a media line. Christaras said brands should think of it more broadly, because its value goes beyond immediate conversion.
“Retail media is one of the most cross-functional disciplines that exists in the organisation,” adds Christaras. “It has to collaborate very closely with digital commerce, with sales, with media and with the retail partners – and that’s what drives success.”
For Batal, the ability to see results also changes where the discipline should live. If money is locked too tightly into one budget area, brands risk losing the ability to optimise based on what they learn.
“Now that you can actually measure performance, it needs to be situated in a space where you have that flexibility and fluidity to move things around,” said Batal. “If you bucket it only in one corner, you lose that agility.”
Why retailer data changes the scale equation
One of the biggest reasons CPG brands are interested in retail media is that many do not have enough usable first-party consumer information of their own.
They may have databases, loyalty mechanics or campaign records, but not always enough volume or purchase precision to power meaningful activation.
Klander explains that this is where retailer transaction information becomes commercially powerful. It offers brands a way to reach meaningful groups based on real buying behaviour rather than broader proxies.
“The predominant lion’s share of CPGs in the industry don’t have enough usable first-party data to create efficiencies at scale,” says Klander. “When you have the ability to go to a retailer like Carrefour and actually access first-party transaction data down to an individual deterministic level, you suddenly have addressability at scale.”
That does not mean access alone is enough. Brands still need teams, partners and processes capable of putting those signals to work – otherwise, the potential remains theoretical.
“On one hand, the access to this data is what changes the game,” said Klander. “On the other hand, how that data is used that will actually change it even further. Clients need to have the bandwidth to implement change. And if they don’t have the bandwidth or the right agency partner to implement, it’s a wasted opportunity”
While retail media promises stronger accountability, it also risks drowning marketers in reports that do not answer the most important questions, if handled incorrectly. The unspoken truth is that the industry does not need more dashboards; what it needs is clearer interpretation.
Christaras argues that retail media networks need to shift from offering data access to demonstrating commercial value. For senior marketers, that means understanding whether retail media activity is genuinely creating growth, not just shifting sales from one bucket to another.
Klander also warns against comparing different measurement approaches as if they are identical. Retail media can offer a closer connection between exposure and transaction, but it requires marketers to understand what each methodology is designed to show.
“You cannot look at media mix modelling (MMM) or last touch attribution (LTA) and expect to have the same return on investment (ROI) report as the one that says I served an ad to 1,000 people and 900 bought it,” explains Klander.
Building on this notion, the conversation repeatedly returned to a central point: reducing retail media to ROAS misses the larger opportunity. While sales matter, retail media can also help brands understand audiences, build new buyer pools and identify unmet needs.
Batal explains that brands need to rethink how they define success depending on the objective, category and buying cycle. A cheese block, for instance, does not behave like a fashion purchase.
“We need to reframe how we measure retail media key performance indicators (KPIs),” said Batal. “Whenever you hear the word retail media, you think, OK, the KPI is return on ad spend (ROAS) or ROI, but in reality everything that we invest, whether it’s an ad on Instagram or an outdoor billboard or retail media, is planned with the intention of unlocking sales eventually.”
Christaras made a similar point from a brand-building perspective. Retail media, at its best, should inform both conversion and consumer understanding.
“I wouldn’t say retail media is just a performance channel, because it’s truly where brand, consumer and commerce intersect at the moment of decision,” says Christaras. “We’re not doing it justice to reduce it just to ROAS, which reveals only a part of the picture.”
She adds that this broader lens can help brands move from transactional activity to more strategic decision-making. The value is not only in selling more today, but in learning where growth may come from tomorrow.
“Use it to convert, but also use it to understand what’s happening in the category,” explains Christaras. “Is there new growth happening in the category? Are we underserving certain audiences? By asking and answering these questions, we begin to become a lot more strategic and not just transactional.”
The need for transparency, education and relevance in retail media
For many marketers, one of retail media’s biggest attractions is the ability to see more of what happens after exposure. But improved visibility also creates new expectations. Once teams can see more, they need to learn how to interpret more.
Batal says that the shift has made conversations with retail partners and internal stakeholders more productive. Instead of relying on one source to shape the narrative, more stakeholders can access the information and debate what it means.
“There’s definitely a big improvement on the transparency, because historically, when you work with retailers, a very limited level of data is shared or passed back,” says Batal. “Now, with the changes of retail media networks, you’re having access to dashboards where you can go in and see the detailed performance, you can do your own layer of analysis, and you can have those conversations in a healthier way within the organisation.”
However, she cautions against expecting instant returns simply because the tools are better. Retail media often costs more, and it takes patience to define and deliver the long-term vision.
“You’re paying more for it, whether it’s for a licence or for creative production” said Batal. “Things are not going to happen overnight. You need to have a strategy. You need to have answers to questions such as: how are you using it? And when do you start seeing the upside?”
Christaras agrees that education remains a major part of the journey. Many organisations can see the promise, but still need confidence before committing more meaningfully.
“The education piece is very important,” says Christaras. “People are still trying to understand within the marketing organisation: what is this providing in terms of value? A lot of education is required.”
For mass-market brands, reach will always matter. But retail media changes the quality of that reach. Instead of speaking broadly to everyone who may be interested, brands can focus on people with more specific behavioural signals.
Batal leans into Arla Foods’ Lacto Free launch as an example of how this can change activation. With limited budget and a specific audience need, retail media allowed the brand to reduce waste.
Batal explains, “When we launched Arla LactoFree, it was a specific product designed for people with a specific need. But we had a limited budget because it’s an innovation, and the initial option was to target everyone because we didn’t know who was lactose intolerant. With retail media, and by partnering with the likes of LiveRamp, we could specifically target people that we realised are lactose intolerant.”
That precision matters even more in an environment where consumers have less patience for irrelevant messages. Attention has become harder to earn, and waste has become more expensive.
“We need to remember the environment we’re operating in,” adds Batal. “Now media has become much more cluttered, and people have far less patience to look at your ads. So, there’s all the more need for us to be relevant and know exactly who we’re targeting.”
Parting advice on retail media from leaders to the industry
The panel’s parting advice to marketers is to avoid waiting for perfection. Retail media is still developing, and the best way to build confidence is often through controlled experimentation. The key is to make tests manageable enough for stakeholders to support.
Batal shares that internal buy-in becomes easier when the ambition is broken into smaller steps. Instead of asking organisations to back sweeping change, teams can create space to learn.
“The biggest thing that I’ve actually seen help us is test and learn,” says Batal. “When you talk about dramatic changes you want to do, everybody is guarded. But when you break it down and say, ‘We’ll only set aside 5 per cent of our budget. Let’s test it; it could work. And if it doesn’t, it’s not that big of a deal.’ then things become easier.”
For Christaras, the strategic point is that retail media should not be a nice add-on or an afterthought. If it is only added late in the planning process, brands cannot extract its full value.
“Don’t make retail media a small part of the business, because its potential is a lot bigger than just seeing it as a performance channel or short-term sales,” adds Christaras. “Build it within your annual brand strategy.”
The regional opportunity remains significant. Klander said the pace of growth is exciting, but speed also brings confusion. The next stage will require more discipline in how retail media is explained, evaluated and scaled.
“This region is only just getting started,” says Klander. “To have an impact and a momentum as big as you have already, that’s really exciting. But with that type of speed, everybody wants everything right away, and that does create a lot of noise.”
He adds that the market needs to avoid treating every retail media proposition as equal. The growth ahead will require more sophistication, especially as more markets in the GCC become part of the conversation.
“The education piece is hugely important, because not all retail media is the same,” said Klander. “Countries such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are going to be super important.”
All in all, retail media is not a magic tap that brands can simply turn on for instant growth. It is more like new infrastructure: powerful when planned properly, underwhelming when treated as a bolt-on and expensive when used without a clear purpose.
The winners will be the brands that know what they are trying to learn, who they are trying to reach and how the work will connect back to the broader commercial and brand agenda.
For senior marketers, the real question is no longer whether retail media matters, because it does. The question is whether organisations are willing to make the internal changes needed to use it well: align teams, educate stakeholders, rethink measurement, invest in creative personalisation and move from isolated tests to a structured growth model.
Retail media may sit close to the shelf, but its implications now reach all the way back into the heart of brand strategy.
Watch the full podcast video here.
CREDITS:
Guests:
– Ghida Batal, Head of Consumer Experiences, Arla Foods;
– Krinio Christaras, Head of Consumer Experiences – MENAP, Mondelēz International;
– Oliver Klander, Vice President – MENA Brands, LiveRamp
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Studio: Ekaterina Shirshova, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
