GoWit partnered with Advertising Business Group (ABG) as a Gold Partner of Marketer of the Future 2026, joining one of MENA’s leading marketing communities to bring senior industry leaders together around the forces reshaping marketing, media, technology, and commerce.
Held in Dubai on 29 October under the theme The Human Edge, Marketer of the Future brought together 250+ senior marketing leaders from across advertisers, agencies, media, technology, research, and government.
Partnership reflects our continued contributing to the conversations shaping marketing across MENA and building stronger connections between the Commerce & Retail Media ecosystem and the wider advertising industry.
Commerce Media Is Becoming Part of the Wider Marketing Ecosystem
Commerce & Retail Media development is increasingly shaped by changes across the broader marketing landscape.
Advertisers are rethinking how they use first-party data and AI. Agencies are adapting planning and activation models. Media owners are exploring new ways to create value from their audiences. Technology companies are building new capabilities around automation, measurement, and decision-making.
As Commerce Media matures, its next phase will increasingly depend on how well it connects with this wider ecosystem.
Retailers and marketplaces may own the audiences, data, and media environments, but advertisers, agencies, technology partners, and measurement providers collectively determine how easily that inventory can be planned, activated, optimized, measured, and scaled.
As a Gold Partner, GoWit joined that conversation with a particular focus on connecting broader marketing developments with the evolution of Commerce & Retail Media across MENA.
Connecting AI, Human Judgment, and Commerce Media
Marketer of the Future 2026 brought together leaders from organizations including P&G, L'Oréal, Unilever, Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, Havas Media, Google, TikTok, and The Trade Desk, creating a strong cross-section of the regional marketing ecosystem.
Discussions throughout the event explored how AI, human judgment, creativity, and trust are reshaping the future of marketing. These questions are increasingly relevant to Commerce & Retail Media as well.
As retailers, marketplaces, advertisers, and agencies gain access to more sophisticated technology, the opportunity is no longer simply to automate more processes. The challenge is to use those capabilities in ways that improve decision-making, relevance, accountability, and control.
That means using first-party audience intelligence to create more relevant advertising experiences, applying automation where it can make media operations more efficient, and maintaining the human judgment required for strategic decisions.
It also means connecting measurement across increasingly integrated on-site, off-site, and in-store environments.
Commerce Media will be shaped by how effectively the industry brings together a smarter and more connected Retail Media ecosystem, AI, first-party data, omnichannel activation, measurement, and human decision-making.
More Connected Commerce & Retail Media Ecosystem in MENA
As GoWit continues expanding its Commerce & Retail Media network across MENA, our role in the region is also evolving.
Building the technology and infrastructure that enables media owners to launch and scale their advertising businesses remains a core part of that role. But developing the ecosystem also requires deeper participation in the wider advertising and marketing community.
That means staying close to the priorities of advertisers and agencies, understanding the challenges facing retailers and media owners, and contributing to discussions around measurement, automation, data, and omnichannel media.
At Marketer of the Future, Emrah Adsan, Cemil Toksöz, and Ahmad Esat represented GoWit, exchanging perspectives with leaders working across marketing, media, technology, and advertising.
The conversations reinforced an important point: the future of Commerce Media will depend on stronger connections between every side of the ecosystem.
As we also explore in our guide to building an AI-first AdOps model, progress is not simply about introducing more automation. It is about combining technology with the right level of human judgment, context, and control.
Building Stronger Connections Across the MENA Marketing Ecosystem
Marketer of the Future 2026 demonstrated the strength of the marketing community ABG has built across the region and the value of bringing different parts of the ecosystem into the same room.
A warm thank you to Eleni Kitra, Katerina Papatryfon Drako, and the wider Advertising Business Group community for the partnership and for creating a platform for meaningful conversations and new connections.
Want to explore how GoWit is helping shape the next stage of Commerce & Retail Media across MENA? Get in touch with our team to start the conversation.
