By: Mohamed Mordi: Digital Acquisition & Retail Media Manager – MENA at Arla Foods

2025 marked a turning point for retail media in MENA, moving it from experimentation into clear commercial relevance for both retailers and brands. What changed was not simply the level of investment, but the expectations attached to it. Retailers increasingly positioned retail media as a meaningful profit contributor, monetizing first-party shopper data while strengthening joint business planning with brand partners. For brands, the lesson was more selective. Retail media delivered tangible results when it was tied to incremental sales, penetration growth, and category performance not when it was treated purely as paid visibility within retailer environments.

At the same time, 2025 exposed a widening gap in retailer readiness across the region. While some players invested in data infrastructure, talent, and measurement capabilities, others focused primarily on monetizing inventory, limiting long-term value for brand partners. This uneven readiness led to inconsistent outcomes and reinforced the need for clearer standards, stronger collaboration, and more disciplined execution. In short, 2025 validated retail media’s potential while making it clear that scale without readiness creates friction rather than sustainable value.

In 2026, the focus shifts from proving relevance to building the foundations required for scale, with data collaboration at the canter. The next phase of retail media will be defined by how effectively brands and retailers adopt clean rooms, privacy-safe data sharing, and interoperable measurement frameworks. Access to retailer first-party data alone will no longer be sufficient; brands will expect environments where insights can be activated consistently across on-site, off-site, and in-store touchpoints, with clear accountability for incrementality.

This evolution will also drive organizational change, as retail media moves closer to commercial and category leadership rather than remaining confined to marketing teams. Retailers that succeed will be those who standardize methodologies, simplify buying models, and build trust through transparency, while brands will increasingly concentrate investment with partners who enable smarter planning instead of fragmented execution. For MENA, where eCommerce adoption continues to accelerate and mobile-first behavior dominates the path to purchase, 2026 represents a decisive moment: those who treat data collaboration as foundational infrastructure will scale with confidence, while others risk stalling under fragmentation.”