The Next Big Shift: How Retail Media Is Eating Programmatic's Lunch in APAC

The digital advertising landscape in Asia-Pacific is undergoing a seismic transformation and it's happening faster than most marketers realize. While programmatic advertising has dominated digital ad budgets for over a decade, a new challenger has emerged that's fundamentally reshaping how brands connect with consumers at the moment of purchase: Retail Media Networks (RMNs).

In 2025, retail media is no longer an emerging channel; it's the fastest-growing segment in digital advertising, clocking a global growth rate of 13.9% compared to programmatic's 8-10%. More telling? Southeast Asia's retail media ad spend is projected to hit $4.7 billion by 2030, with India's retail media spend surging by 21.9% this year alone outpacing both paid search (6.7%) and paid social (8.7%).​

This isn't just a budget reallocation story. It's a fundamental power shift from probabilistic targeting to commerce-backed precision, from fragmented measurement to closed-loop attribution, and from uncertain ROI to transaction-level proof of performance.​

The Uncomfortable Truth About Programmatic

For years, programmatic advertising promised efficiency, scale, and precision. Yet beneath the surface, the cracks have been widening. According to recent industry research, 37% of programmatic ad spend is wasted due to poor targeting, non-viewable impressions, and made-for-advertising (MFA) site placements. That's nearly $26.8 billion globally flowing into the void.​

The core issue? Programmatic relies on inferred intent, not verified behavior. Advertisers pay premiums for third-party audience segments built on browsing patterns and demographics educated guesses at best. Even with sophisticated AI-driven bidding, brands are targeting people who might be interested, not shoppers actively in-market for their products.​

This inefficiency has created what one Digiday report calls "programmatic fatigue" marketers wading through opaque ad tech middlemen, questionable inventory quality, and murky measurement. The promise of automation has, in many cases, become blind automation that inflates CPCs by 18-25% without delivering proportional returns.​

Why Retail Media Networks Are Winning in APAC

Retail media networks flip the programmatic model on its head by offering something advertisers have been chasing for years: first-party commerce data. Instead of targeting based on what someone might want, RMNs target based on what they've actually searched for, browsed, and purchased.​

The value proposition is simple but powerful:

This shift is particularly pronounced in APAC, where mobile-first consumers, super-app ecosystems, and e-commerce maturity have created the perfect conditions for RMN dominance.​

APAC's Unique RMN Advantage

Unlike Western markets where Amazon and Walmart dominate, APAC's retail media landscape is diverse, fragmented, and rapidly innovating:

India's Quick Commerce Boom: Platforms like Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart aren't just delivery apps, they're full-fledged retail media networks. Zepto recently made its retail data available via The Trade Desk, reporting 2.3-3.8x ROAS within weeks of campaign activation across 60+ million monthly active users.​

Southeast Asia's Super-App Ecosystem: Grab, Shopee, Lazada, and Carousell are blending commerce, content, and advertising into seamless experiences. Grab's partnership with Kantar found that 100% of RMN campaigns saw positive ad recall 2.3x above industry norms.​

Shoppertainment & Live Commerce: In markets like Thailand and Indonesia, platforms like TikTok Shop and Shopee are pioneering "shoppertainment" embedding ads within live-stream shopping, gamification, and AI-driven video commerce. TikTok Shop Thailand generated 12.07 billion baht in revenue in its first year.​

Country-Specific Growth Trajectories:

• Indonesia: 13.41% CAGR (leading SEA)

• Vietnam: 12.37% CAGR

• Thailand: 11.76% CAGR

• Philippines: 9.29% CAGR

• Singapore: 8.79% CAGR

• Malaysia: 7.82% CAGR​

The Programmatic-Retail Media Convergence (And Why It's Inevitable)

Here's where the story gets more nuanced: retail media isn't killing programmatic, it's absorbing it.

The future belongs to programmatic retail media RMNs that combine commerce data precision with programmatic automation and scale. According to research by Koddi:

• 96% of brands and agencies are open to buying on-site retail media through a DSP

• 80% said it would be easier to shift more budget to retailers if DSP buying were enabled

• 49% said DSP access would trigger a significant shift in budget​

Why? Because advertisers want the best of both worlds: the targeting power of retail media and the operational efficiency of programmatic infrastructure.​

The Two-Way Value Exchange

For Programmatic Buyers: Programmatic retail media allows them to bring retailer first-party data directly into existing DSP workflows. They can extend audience strategies, run retail media alongside other programmatic buys, and apply familiar bidding and measurement approaches now powered by verified purchase signals that tie spend directly to sales.​

For Retail Media Marketers: Programmatic integration extends retail audiences off-site and unlocks virtually unlimited inventory to complement finite on-site placements. This enables true full-funnel campaigns that influence shoppers well before they search and convert—something impossible with on-site search ads alone.​

The Operational Reality: Why Most RMNs Are Still Struggling

Despite the hype, most retail media networks today are operationally immature. They offer limited supply, rely heavily on manual processes, and struggle to integrate with the buying workflows advertisers expect.​

The exception? Amazon and Walmart. Amazon's DSP is fast becoming the first-choice buying platform for commerce advertisers, enabling brands to programmatically buy ads across Amazon properties and third-party sites, all while leveraging Amazon's shopping behavior data. Walmart Connect has similarly scaled its programmatic infrastructure, recently expanding into connected TV.​

For everyone else outside the Amazon/Walmart orbit, keeping up without programmatic infrastructure is becoming unsustainable. Networks that remain manual face:​

• Fragmentation: Too disconnected to justify significant brand investment

• Scalability Issues: Too manual to grow profitably

• Isolation: Too siloed to compete with open-web targeting options​

According to Skai's State of Retail Media 2025 report, nearly 60% of retail marketers want to consolidate retail programs into a single platform - because managing dozens of disconnected platforms with different measurement, audience rules, and buying processes is inefficient and nearly impossible to optimize.​

The Bottom Line: It's Not Programmatic vs. Retail Media - It's Programmatic Through Retail Media

The narrative that retail media is "eating programmatic's lunch" is only half true. What's really happening is a convergence: retail media is absorbing programmatic's automation, scale, and workflow efficiencies, while programmatic is adopting retail media's commerce data, closed-loop measurement, and brand-safe inventory.​

By 2026, the distinction between "retail media" and "programmatic advertising" will blur entirely. The question won't be which channel to prioritize it will be how effectively you're leveraging commerce data within your programmatic infrastructure.​

For brands in APAC, the opportunity window is now. With 99% of marketers planning to increase RMN investment and Southeast Asia's retail media spend projected to grow 11% annually through 2030, the early movers who master programmatic retail media integration will define the next decade of digital advertising.​

The lunch isn't being eaten, it's being upgraded. And the smartest players are already at the table.

At Unpromptd, we do not just open doors. We help you own the room. --- If you are a global platform looking to enter or expand in Asia, reach out to us at contact@unpromptd.com. Let’s build the future together.