EMEA Retail Media Strategy Lead in Basingstoke

My client is a global consumer goods business with a portfolio of leading brands across beauty, personal care and lifestyle categories, sold through major retailers and ecommerce platforms across EMEA. With Ecommerce as a key growth priority, increasing focus on digital shelf excellence, retailer search visibility, and online conversion across ecommerce retailers beyond Amazon.

The Role

Reporting into the Head of Ecommerce EMEA, this position will act as the central point of expertise for retail media across the EMEA region. You will be responsible for understanding how retail media is performing across key retailers and markets, identifying where value is being created or lost, and defining clear actions to improve performance. This is primarily a strategic, analytical and enablement role, but you will directly manage certain accounts and be accountable for ensuring that the right plans, frameworks and standards are in place and consistently applied. An exciting opportunity to shape how retail media is approached across EMEA at a relatively early stage of maturity. You will have visibility across multiple markets and retailers, with the ability to influence both strategy and execution at scale. Offering a mix of performance analysis, strategic direction and capability building, with the scope to evolve into a more centralised and hands-on model over time.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy and Direction
  • Define and evolve the retail media strategy across EMEA, aligned to commercial priorities, category plans and ecommerce growth targets.
  • Bring structure to how retail media is approached across markets, ensuring a clear link between investment and business outcomes.
  • Support longer-term planning, including how retail media should scale and where more centralised approaches may be appropriate.
• Performance Analysis & Insight
  • Analyse campaign performance across retailers and markets, identifying inefficiencies, missed opportunities and areas of over or under investment.
  • Translate platform and retailer data into commercially relevant insights, linking media performance to sales, margin, EPOS and category growth.
  • Establish consistent measurement frameworks and KPIs across markets (e.g. ROAS, CPC, CTR, share of search, incrementality), enabling meaningful performance comparison and decision-making.
• Optimisation & Execution Enablement
  • Develop clear optimisation roadmaps by retailer, category and brand, and ensure these are implemented through local teams and partners.
  • Introduce a structured test-and-learn approach across EMEA, defining priorities, hypotheses and success criteria, and ensuring learnings are captured and shared.
  • Support local teams and agencies in improving campaign execution, holding a level of accountability for delivery and outcomes.
• Investment & Commercial Planning
  • Bring greater rigour to investment decisions, supporting where budgets should be prioritised across retailers, formats and markets to maximise return.
  • Partner with ecommerce and sales teams to ensure retail media investment is aligned to promotions, launches and key trading moments.
  • Support evaluation of retailer opportunities, including category events and always-on activity.
• Governance, Standards & Capability Building
  • Build and roll out retail media playbooks, guidelines and governance frameworks to improve consistency and quality of execution across markets.
  • Support capability building across EMEA through training, coaching and ongoing performance reviews with local teams.
  • Ensure retail media is fully integrated with digital shelf fundamentals (content, availability, pricing), recognising the dependency between the two.
• Retailer & Partner Collaboration
  • Work with retailers and media partners to understand platform capabilities, new opportunities and evolving best practice.
  • Stay close to developments across key platforms such as Criteo, CitrusAd and Amazon Ads.
  • Work with external partners and agencies to ensure clarity of direction and accountability for delivery.
• Centralised Account Ownership & Future Model Evolution
  • Take direct ownership of selected centrally managed retail media accounts as this capability is established, including planning, activation oversight, optimisation and performance delivery.
  • Act as the lead contact for these accounts, working closely with retailers and partners to drive performance and unlock growth opportunities.
  • Define what should sit centrally vs locally over time, helping shape a more scalable and efficient operating model.
  • Identify where increased central ownership of campaigns or platforms would deliver stronger commercial outcomes.

What We're Looking For

• 4+ years’ experience in retail media, ecommerce or performance marketing, ideally within FMCG, retail or agency environments.
• Strong understanding of how retail media works across key platforms such as Criteo, CitrusAd and Amazon Ads.
• Proven ability to analyse campaign performance and translate data into clear, actionable recommendations that improve commercial outcomes.
• Strong commercial acumen, with a clear understanding of how media investment impacts sales, margin and retailer dynamics.
• Experience working across multiple stakeholders (ecommerce, sales, brand, agencies), with the ability to influence without direct control.
• Confident communicator, able to present complex performance data in a simple and compelling way.
• Experience developing frameworks, playbooks or best practice guidelines that can be scaled across teams.
• Organised and structured, with the ability to manage multiple markets, retailers and priorities simultaneously.
• Curious and proactive, with a strong interest in testing, learning and continuous improvement.
• Comfortable operating in an environment where ways of working are still being defined.