Retail media is no longer only sponsored product ads sitting at the bottom of the funnel.
In 2026, advertisers are increasingly connecting retail data to onsite, offsite, video, connected TV and physical store touchpoints, and the strategic question has shifted from which RMN to test next to how to orchestrate retail media, prove incrementality and scale what genuinely works.
This shift matters just as much in MENA as anywhere else. Retail and commerce media adoption is accelerating across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but brands here need to build their own playbook rather than copying a mature US market approach without adjustment.
For brands looking to turn these capabilities into a connected strategy, Platformance’s retail media solution brings onsite, offsite and in-store activation together around measurable commerce outcomes.
The biggest retail media trends in 2026 are AI led campaign orchestration, full funnel and offsite activation, in store digital media, stronger first party data use, cross network buying, and a shift from ROAS only reporting to incrementality.
For MENA brands, the priority is connecting these capabilities to measurable sales outcomes rather than adding fragmented media tests.
Retail Media in 2026: From Sponsored Listings to Commerce Media
A retail media network combines advertising inventory, shopper data and measurement capabilities owned or enabled by a retailer, marketplace or commerce platform.
The model spans three environments: onsite, covering search, category, product detail and app placements; offsite, covering display, social, video, connected TV and publisher inventory that uses retail signals; and in store, covering digital screens, point of sale, audio and connected store environments.
Commerce media is increasingly the more useful umbrella term, because the underlying model is spreading well beyond traditional retail into quick commerce and other transaction rich sectors. Industry standards work now explicitly broadens the conversation beyond conventional retail media to include quick commerce alongside it, which is a meaningful shift from how the category was defined even a couple of years ago.
Trend 1: Retail Media Becomes a Full Funnel Planning Channel
Retail media is expanding well beyond conversion focused sponsored products into genuine awareness, consideration and conversion formats. Video, connected TV, rich media, offsite display and in store placements are increasingly being used to influence shoppers before they even start searching, rather than only capturing demand that already exists.
The operational implication is straightforward: upper funnel investment needs to be planned alongside eventual sales measurement, not treated as a separate activity disconnected from performance.
A practical example illustrates this well. A brand might use connected TV or contextual video to reach likely category buyers, retarget engaged audiences through offsite display, then capture the resulting demand through onsite sponsored placements, treating the whole sequence as one connected plan rather than three unrelated campaigns.
Current marketer research reflects this shift, showing the channel expanding beyond lower funnel listings into offsite, streaming and genuinely full funnel activity.
Trend 2: AI Moves From Campaign Assistance to Orchestration
There is a meaningful difference between AI assistance and AI orchestration. Assistance means generating copy, suggesting bids or producing reports. Orchestration means actually connecting product feeds, inventory, audiences, creative, pacing and measurement across retail media environments as one coordinated system.
In 2026, this shows up as AI led audience prioritisation, automated budget allocation, dynamic creative, retail signal analysis and anomaly detection running continuously rather than periodically. Agentic commerce deserves a careful mention here too.
It may well reshape discovery and shopping journeys over time, but it does not remove the need for accurate product data, trusted retailer environments and transparent media measurement, all of which remain just as essential as before.
Worth flagging as a caution: brands should be wary of unsubstantiated efficiency multipliers or claims that AI can guarantee ROAS, since neither claim tends to hold up under scrutiny.
IAB Europe’s 2026 outlook specifically identifies AI led orchestration and agentic commerce as major developments shaping the commerce media ecosystem this year.
AI readiness checklist: clean product data, reliable conversion signals, clear guardrails, human approval rules and incrementality measurement in place before scaling AI driven optimisation.
Trend 3: Offsite Retail Media Earns a Defined Role in the Media Mix
Offsite retail media uses a retailer’s data to activate media inventory beyond the retailer’s own owned properties. It matters because it extends first party audience signals into environments where audiences actually consume content and video, not only where they transact.
The formats most likely to matter here are programmatic display, online video, connected TV, social extensions and premium publisher inventory.
There is a real risk worth naming directly: offsite reach without transparent audience logic, frequency controls, brand safety and measurement can end up being conventional programmatic buying relabelled as retail media, which delivers none of the actual advantage the category promises.
Buyers should be asking a consistent set of questions before committing budget: What retail signal is actually powering the targeting? Where does the ad run? Can the retailer or platform report exposure, sales and incremental impact? What are the brand safety and fraud controls? Offsite investment is a recurring theme across 2026 outlooks, alongside the broader expansion of programmatic retail media.
Trend 4: In Store Media Becomes Part of the Digital Retail Media Plan
In store retail media spans digital screens, audio, point of sale and mobile to store activation. Physical and digital retail experiences increasingly require shared planning, shared inventory availability and shared measurement, rather than being run as two separate disciplines.
The highest value moments tend to sit around the category aisle, promotion zones, checkout, and real time local inventory or time of day relevance.
In store measurement is genuinely more complex than tracking an onsite click, so brands should ask retailers directly for their definitions of ad delivery, opportunity to see, sales match methodology and control groups before trusting the resulting numbers.
Several 2026 outlooks identify digitised physical stores and the convergence of physical and digital media as a significant area of growth, which tracks with what regional retailers are already investing in.
IAB and IAB Europe have published dedicated in store retail media definitions and measurement standards, giving this trend a firmer evidentiary footing than most commentary on in store media has historically had.
In store screens are not a novelty format at this point. They represent a genuine incrementality and retail experience opportunity that deserves the same planning rigour as any digital channel.
Trend 5: Incrementality Replaces ROAS Only Decision Making
This is the trend that deserves the most authority and the most careful explanation, because it underpins everything else on this list.
Attribution and incrementality answer different questions. Attribution assigns credit to touchpoints along the path to conversion.
Incrementality estimates the sales that would not have occurred without the advertising in the first place. ROAS can mislead precisely because it may reward ads shown to shoppers who were already highly likely to buy regardless of whether they saw the ad at all.
Credible approaches to measuring incrementality include holdout tests, geo experiments, audience splits, matched market testing and model based counterfactuals.
A useful measurement hierarchy runs from delivery quality, covering reach, viewability and frequency, through to commerce impact, covering sales, conversion and new to brand results, and finally to causal value, covering incremental sales, incremental ROAS and cost per incremental customer.
IAB guidance identifies experiments, model based counterfactuals, econometric models and hybrid approaches as valid paths to incremental measurement, and IAB Europe’s updated Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2.1 go further still, formally defining incrementality and updating reporting considerations such as gross versus net sales, new to brand timeframes and quick commerce measurement specifically.
A simple way to visualise this: impression leads to attributed conversion, which is a different, generally smaller number than incremental conversion.
Trend 6: Retail Media Networks Consolidate, But Strategies Must Stay Diversified
There is a real tension worth naming here. Brands want fewer platforms, unified buying and comparable reporting, all of which point toward consolidation. But over concentration in too few networks can reduce learning, negotiating power and access to unique audiences, which points the other way entirely.
2026 is less about launching more networks and more about operational usability, consistency and strategic prioritisation across the ones that already exist. A practical tiering model helps here: Tier 1 covers core retail partners with proven sales volume and data access, Tier 2 covers strategic category, quick commerce or regional networks, and Tier 3 covers controlled tests with fixed learning goals and clear exit criteria.
Useful prioritisation factors include audience relevance, category fit, available formats, data quality, incrementality capability, commercial model, reporting and operational burden.
Trend 7: Interoperability and Retail Media DSPs Reduce Fragmentation
Interoperability in a retail media context means having more consistent ways to plan, buy, manage creative and report across multiple retail environments, rather than running each network as its own isolated silo.
This matters considerably to MENA enterprise teams, many of which run lean media operations and cannot realistically support a dozen disconnected platforms.
Retail media DSPs, standardised APIs, consistent reporting and common ad size frameworks are all part of this shift. It is worth balancing the benefit against its limits though: centralised activation does not automatically mean comparable measurement, since data quality and methodology still need independent validation regardless of how unified the buying interface looks.
IAB Europe’s 2026 outlook identifies interoperability, alongside AI and measurement, as one of the major developments reshaping the commerce media ecosystem this year, and standards work through 2026 is broadly aimed at greater consistency and comparability across commerce media, which should make this easier over time even if it is not solved yet.
For more on how programmatic buying connects to this shift, see our programmatic advertising and media accountability glossary entries.
Trend 8: First Party Data Value Depends on Consent, Quality and Activation
Retailer transaction and behavioural signals are valuable precisely because they connect media activity to real shopping contexts rather than inferred interest. But the essentials that make that data usable are consent, data governance, clean segmentation, secure matching and genuine relevance, not just the raw existence of the data itself.
There is an important distinction between having first party data and being able to activate it responsibly and measure it properly, and that gap is where a lot of retail media value quietly gets lost.
Clean rooms and privacy safe collaboration are worth mentioning only where a business can actually substantiate its own capability or partner relationship, rather than as a generic claim.
A practical checklist for evaluating any data source: data source, consent basis, refresh cadence, match rate, audience size, suppression logic and measurement method. None of this constitutes legal advice, and absolute privacy or compliance claims are best avoided entirely in favour of describing what a specific setup actually does.
Trend 9: Dynamic Creative Ties Media to Retail Reality
Dynamic creative optimisation in retail media means ads that adapt automatically to product availability, price, promotion, location, seasonality and category behaviour, rather than running one static creative regardless of what is actually happening on the shelf.
This matters a great deal in quick commerce, retail promotions, Ramadan and Eid periods, back to school and other regional offer cycles where conditions change quickly and generic creative ages fast.
Making this work requires creative, merchandising and media teams to genuinely work together rather than operating in separate workflows.
Common failure points include stale feeds, creative promoting unavailable products, conflicting promotion messages, and generic creative that ignores category context entirely.
Industry forecasts expect more SKU level messaging tied to real time availability, pricing and shopper behaviour through 2026. A quick commerce campaign, for example, should suppress out of stock SKUs, prioritise available bundles by area, and adapt offers by time of day, rather than serving one nationwide generic ad regardless of local conditions.
Trend 10: MENA Retail Media Shifts From Experimentation to Accountable Growth
This is the regional differentiation trend, and it deserves genuine depth rather than a token geographic mention.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the region’s centres of gravity for retail media, thanks to mature digital commerce ecosystems and stronger retailer data capabilities, while MENA overall remains earlier stage than the US market as a whole.
The implications for local advertisers are practical. Prioritise quality retail and commerce partners over running a long list of small, disconnected tests.
Build measurement requirements directly into commercial agreements rather than treating them as an afterthought. Account properly for Arabic and English creative, local shopper behaviour and regional promotional calendars.
Include quick commerce where it genuinely aligns to category and product availability. Apply regionally appropriate brand safety, fraud control and data practices throughout.
It is worth avoiding unsupported market size forecasts here unless they are independently verified at the point of publication, since this space moves quickly and stale figures age poorly.
How to Build a Retail Media Strategy for 2026
Define the commercial outcome. Select the business goal that matters most, whether that is incremental sales, new to brand customers, category penetration, qualified traffic or app growth.
Map the shopper journey. Identify discovery, consideration, transaction and retention moments across onsite, offsite, connected TV, social, creator and in store environments.
Prioritise retail media partners. Apply the Tier 1 to Tier 3 selection model outlined in Trend 6.
Design measurement before launch. Agree on attribution windows, sales definitions, control methodology, reporting cadence and data ownership before any budget moves.
Optimise for incremental value. Reallocate spend based on incremental sales, efficiency, audience quality and sustainable learning, not only last click ROAS.
Why Radius by Platformance
Acting on these trends generally requires a partner that can operate across more than one part of the retail media stack, rather than a single format or a single network. Radius is Platformance’s retail media solution, built to help brands reach retail audiences across onsite, offsite and in store environments, subject to available inventory and campaign objectives, and to connect that activity back to verified sales rather than delivery metrics alone.
Platformance’s approach to the trends above centres on curated, brand safe supply, anti-fraud controls, and outcome led optimisation, reflected in its “Pay for Customers, not Media” positioning: accountable investment tied to verified business outcomes, rather than vanity metrics that look good on a dashboard but do not reflect real commercial impact. This is built specifically for where the MENA market is today, across UAE, Saudi Arabia and the wider region, rather than assuming a playbook designed for a more mature market will translate directly.
Retail Media Trends 2026: What to Do Next
The winners in 2026 will not be the brands running the most networks. They will be the ones connecting retail data, media, creative and measurement around genuinely measurable outcomes.
Three immediate priorities stand out from everything above: build full funnel capability rather than staying stuck at the bottom of the funnel, demand incrementality ready measurement from every partner rather than accepting attribution alone, and choose scalable, trusted partners rather than running fragmented media experiments indefinitely.
Build your accountable retail media plan. Speak with Platformance about reaching high value commerce audiences across MENA and measuring the outcomes that matter.
Sources & Further Reading
IAB Europe - Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2.1
IAB Europe - Incrementality Guidelines
IAB MENA - Retail Media Network Capability Map
IAB MENA - MENA Retail Media ECOScape
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