The future of retail media tech: AI, agentic commerce, and first-party data at Zalando
25.06.2026•24:06
In this episode of *Inside Fashion Marketing*, you will discover exactly how artificial intelligence, advanced self-service platforms, and robust first-party data are transforming modern retail media from basic sponsored product listings into a powerful, full-funnel e-commerce growth engine. Host Heike Lari (Director Partner Marketing and Consultancy at Zalando Partner Marketing Services) sits down for a fascinating chat with Diaa Abdallah, VP Tech at ZMS, live from the e-commerce and retail tech hub of Berlin, Germany. Together, they pull back the curtain on how Zalando builds its innovative marketing technology entirely in-house to serve brands across Europe. Diaa brings over a decade of performance optimization and audience targeting experience from his time at Amazon to explain how ZMS slices and dices data from 53 million active customers to deliver highly personalized ad experiences. The duo dives deep into the tangible tools empowering brands today, ranging from flexible MaxCPC steering controls for premium products to cutting-edge AI features that generate creative assets in seconds. They also tackle the massive macro shifts impacting the global marketing landscape, exploring the rise of agentic commerce, off-site AI integrations (like ChatGPT ads), and how retailers are securely guarding their data while building conversational tools like the Zalando Assistant. Whether you are looking to maximize your short-term Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) or understand the downstream impact of long-term brand awareness campaigns, this episode provides a comprehensive playbook for the future of digital commerce. Key Takeaways From This Episode: **In-House Tech & Self-Service Innovation:** Learn why ZMS relies on entirely proprietary, in-house engineering to build highly intuitive self-service tools that give brands ultimate campaign flexibility. **Granular Control via MaxCPC:** Discover how automated algorithms work hand-in-hand with manual controls, allowing brands to adjust what they pay per click based on whether a product is a premium item or a discounted asset. **Unlocking First-Party Data safely:** Understand how millions of daily customer transactions and page views are utilized to build highly tailored audience segments, resulting in significantly higher click-through rates (CTR) and campaign performance. **The Rise of Agentic Commerce:** Diaa shares his expert view on the dual trend of AI commerce, integrating off-site with popular AI platforms while enhancing internal, conversational shopping experiences. **Bridging Digital Tech with Real-World Experiences:** Discover how ZMS transcends traditional retail media by connecting online campaign tech with physical event spaces to build comprehensive, end-to-end consumer memories. **The ZMS "Steerco" Culture:** An inside look at Zalando's collaborative internal environment in Germany, which focuses on inclusion, team consensus, and empowering individual engineers to rapidly prototype natural-language data solutions. **Explore Zalando Partner Marketing Services:** https://partner.zalando.com/services/marketing