Retail Media in Asia: The Complete Guide to Advertising on Shopee, Lazada, Grab and TikTok Shop

This matters because many brands waste money on broad social ads that get likes but no checkouts. Retail media flips that. You pay to be seen where buying already happens, and the platform tells you which ads made money. The catch is that each platform has its own rules, auctions and tools, and they change often. This guide walks you through all of it in plain language.

Key Takeaways

• Retail media advertising in Asia is ads inside shopping apps (Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop, Grab), and it ties spend directly to orders.
• Shopee and Lazada reward strong listings first. Ads amplify a good product page, they do not fix a weak one.
• As of late 2026, TikTok Shop runs its shop ads through GMV Max, an automated campaign type, so your creative and your product catalog do most of the heavy lifting.
• GrabAds reaches people inside GrabFood, GrabMart and the ride app, which suits food, beverage, grocery and everyday brands.
• Start with one country, one hero product and a clear profit target (break-even ROAS) before you scale.
• Plan budgets around mega sale days like 9.9, 11.11 and 12.12, when ad costs and order volume both jump.

What Is Retail Media Advertising in Asia?

Retail media is advertising sold by a store, using that store's own shopper data. In the US, think of Amazon sponsored products or Walmart Connect. In Asia, the "store" is usually a giant app that combines shopping, payments, video and delivery.

There are three big reasons it works so well in this region:

• Shopping happens in apps. Many shoppers in Southeast Asia skip brand websites entirely and buy inside Shopee, Lazada or TikTok Shop.
• The data is first-party. The platform knows what a person searched, bought and returned. That makes targeting sharper than most outside ad networks.
• Results are closed loop. "Closed loop" means the platform can connect an ad view or click to an actual order, so you see real return on ad spend (ROAS), not guesses.

The big players you need to know are Shopee (owned by Sea Group), Lazada (backed by Alibaba), TikTok Shop (which in Indonesia now operates alongside Tokopedia), and Grab (ride hailing, food and grocery delivery, and payments). Outside Southeast Asia, the same idea applies to platforms like Coupang in Korea, Rakuten and Amazon in Japan, and Amazon India and Flipkart. If Korea is on your list, our guide on selling on Coupang as a foreign brand covers that market.

Why Brands Are Moving Budget Into Shopping Apps

If you run a business, you have likely felt this pain: you boost posts, run social ads, and your dashboard shows reach and clicks, but sales barely move. You cannot tell which ad paid for itself.

Retail media fixes three common problems:

1. Wasted spend. Ads only show to people browsing products, so fewer dollars go to people who will never buy.
2. Slow learning. Because every order is tracked, you learn within days which products and keywords work.
3. Low trust for new brands. Shoppers in Asia lean heavily on ratings, sold counts and official store badges. Ads help a new product collect its first sales and reviews faster, which then helps it rank on its own.

The honest trade-off is margin. Marketplace commissions, payment fees, shipping subsidies and ad costs all come out of the same sale. Platform fees in Southeast Asia have risen several times over the last two years, and they differ by country and category. Before you spend a single dollar on ads, you need to know your true profit per order after all of those costs.

Shopee Ads: How They Work and Where to Start

Shopee is the largest marketplace in much of Southeast Asia, and its ad system lives inside Seller Centre. As of late 2026, the main ad types you will see are:

• Search Ads. Your product shows when shoppers search keywords you choose (or keywords Shopee picks for you). These usually convert best because the shopper is already looking.
• Discovery Ads. Your product appears in places like "similar products," "you may also like" and the daily discover feed. These reach shoppers earlier, before they search.
• Shop Ads. These promote your whole store at the top of search results, which works when you have a range of products rather than a single hero item.
• GMV Max. Shopee describes this as an upgraded version of its automatic bidding. You set a target ROAS, and the system adjusts bids across placements such as search, discovery and video to chase that target. Shopee's help center notes that each GMV Max campaign focuses on one product.

A simple Shopee starting plan

1. Pick one hero product with good reviews, clear photos and a competitive price.
2. Fix the listing first: a keyword-rich title in the local language, at least 6 to 9 clean images, a short video, and complete product specs.
3. Run Search Ads on 10 to 20 specific keywords. Avoid one-word generic terms at the start because they burn budget fast.
4. Run one automated campaign (GMV Max where available) alongside it, with a ROAS target near your break-even point.
5. After 7 to 14 days, pause keywords that spend without orders and raise budgets on the ones that sell.

Mistakes to avoid on Shopee

• Advertising a product with zero reviews and no vouchers. Shoppers skip it and your click costs are wasted.
• Using machine translated titles. Shoppers search in natural local phrases, so stiff translations miss real search terms. Our ads are written by native speakers for exactly this reason.
• Setting a ROAS target that is too high on day one. The system becomes so cautious it barely spends, so you learn nothing.

Lazada Sponsored Solutions: The Lazada Ad Toolkit

Lazada groups its ads under the name Sponsored Solutions. As of late 2026, the core tools include:

• Sponsored Discovery. Cost-per-click ads that show in search results and recommendation spots. This is the closest match to Shopee Search and Discovery Ads.
• Sponsored Affiliate. You pay a commission only when an affiliate (a creator or publisher) drives a sale. This is useful when cash is tight because you pay for results, not clicks.
• Sponsored Max and campaign boosters. Lazada has offered automated, goal-based options and sale-period boosters (such as its Mega Sales Accelerator) to push spend around big campaigns.

Lazada has also been adding automatic features. For example, sellers reported that from late 2025 into January 2026, Lazada began showing automatic "marketing tags" and "personalized tags" on sponsored search results in its six markets. These tags are generated from data like sales volume, reviews and repurchase rates. You do not control them directly, which is another reason clean titles and strong reviews matter.

When Lazada makes sense

Lazada tends to be strong for official brand stores through LazMall, electronics, beauty and higher-trust purchases, though this varies by country. Many brands run both Shopee and Lazada, then shift budget to whichever platform returns a better ROAS for their category.

Tip: Lazada's birthday sale (usually in late March) and its 11.11 event are two of its biggest moments. Book budget ahead, because click costs rise when every seller bids at once.

TikTok Shop Ads and GMV Max

TikTok Shop mixes entertainment and shopping. People do not open it to search for a product. They open it to watch videos, and a product catches their eye.

The biggest change for advertisers is automation. TikTok's own help center states that beginning July 2025, GMV Max became the default and only supported campaign type for TikTok Shop ads. It lists Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the United States and the United Kingdom among the markets for these shop ads. Platforms change rules often, so check your Ads Manager for what is live in your market today.

How GMV Max works in plain words

You choose the products, set a budget and set a target return. The system then decides where to show your ads (in the For You feed, in search, on LIVE) and which videos to use. It can pull in videos from your own account and from affiliate creators who promote your products.

That means three things decide your results:

1. Creative volume. The system needs many videos to test. Brands that feed it 10 to 30 fresh short videos a month usually give it more room to find winners than brands with 2 or 3.
2. Product price and offer. Impulse buys convert better on TikTok. Bundles, free gifts and limited-time vouchers help.
3. Affiliate creators. Creator content often outperforms brand content. If you are building a creator program, our KOL marketing guide for Southeast Asia explains how to find and brief creators.

A practical TikTok Shop plan

1. Launch 3 to 5 products, not your whole catalog.
2. Produce short videos in the local language: unboxing, before and after, "3 reasons I switched" and quick demos.
3. Open your products to affiliates with a fair commission so creators have a reason to post.
4. Run GMV Max at a modest budget for 7 to 14 days before judging it.
5. Keep adding new videos weekly. Creative fatigue (when people stop reacting to an ad they have seen too often) sets in fast on TikTok.

GrabAds: Reaching Shoppers on Food, Grocery and Rides

Grab is not a classic marketplace, but it is one of the most powerful retail media networks in the region. Millions of people open Grab to order food, buy groceries through GrabMart, pay with GrabPay or book a ride.

GrabAds lets brands reach those people. According to Grab's own published material, its formats include search ads, banner and image ads, listing boosts for merchants, in-transit ads that show while users wait for a ride, and even vehicle-based ads on cars and motorbikes. Grab has described pricing models including CPM (cost per thousand views), CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per action) and a cost-per-order model it piloted with small merchants. Grab also reported that GrabAds passed a 100 million US dollar annualized revenue run rate as of the third quarter of 2023, which shows how fast this channel has grown. Formats and pricing vary by market, so confirm what is offered where you sell.

Who should use GrabAds

• Food and beverage brands, both restaurants and packaged goods sold through GrabMart
• Grocery, personal care and household brands that want to win the "basket"
• Brands launching in a city that want awareness among active, paying app users
• Services like banks, telcos and travel brands that want high-intent audiences

If you want help building campaigns on Grab, our GrabAds retail media service handles setup, creative and reporting in one place.

How to Budget Retail Media Advertising in Asia

Budgeting is where most brands go wrong. They pick a number that "feels right" instead of working backward from profit.

Step 1: Find your break-even ROAS

ROAS means revenue divided by ad spend. If you sell a product for 20 dollars and keep 8 dollars after product cost, platform fees and shipping, you can spend up to 8 dollars in ads per order and still break even. That gives a break-even ROAS of 20 divided by 8, which is 2.5.

Any campaign above 2.5 makes money. Any campaign below it loses money, unless you are deliberately buying first reviews.

Step 2: Choose a testing budget

For a first test in one country, many brands set aside enough budget for each hero product to collect at least 20 to 50 orders from ads. That is usually enough data to tell what is working. Smaller markets like Malaysia or the Philippines can be cheaper to test than Indonesia or Thailand, though costs depend heavily on your category.

Step 3: Split by job

• Search and discovery ads (Shopee, Lazada): steady, high-intent orders
• TikTok Shop GMV Max: new customer reach and volume, driven by video
• GrabAds: awareness and basket share for food, grocery and daily needs
• Affiliate and creator commissions: pay-per-sale reach with social proof

Step 4: Plan for mega sale days

Ad costs climb before and during double-day sales. Many brands raise budgets a week before 9.9, 10.10, 11.11 and 12.12, then lower them after. Our Asia e-commerce calendar for 2027 lists every major sale and holiday by country so you can plan months ahead.

Your Retail Media Launch Checklist

Use this checklist before you turn on ads in any market:

• Official store or verified seller account set up in each country
• Product titles, descriptions and images written in the local language by native speakers
• Pricing checked against local competitors, including shipping and vouchers
• Stock placed in a local or regional warehouse, so delivery times are competitive
• Break-even ROAS calculated per product
• At least a handful of genuine reviews (never fake reviews, which break platform rules)
• Customer service ready to reply in chat quickly, in the local language
• Product registrations, labels and certifications in place where required (for example, food, cosmetics and supplements often need local approval)
• Weekly reporting rhythm: spend, orders, ROAS, top keywords, top videos

Regulations for things like product registration, labeling, halal claims and import taxes differ by country and change often. This guide is not legal or tax advice, so confirm the rules with a local professional before you launch.

Common Mistakes That Waste Retail Media Budgets

We see the same mistakes again and again. Avoiding them can save you months and a lot of money.

1. Launching in five countries at once. Each market has its own language, prices, fees and shoppers. Start with one, win, then expand.
2. Advertising weak listings. Ads send traffic. If the page does not convert, you pay for visits that go nowhere.
3. Ignoring chat. Shoppers in Asia often message a seller before buying. Slow replies lose sales and can hurt store ratings.
4. Judging TikTok Shop after three days. Automated campaigns need time and creative to learn.
5. Copying US creative. Glossy studio ads often lose to simple, local, phone-shot videos in this region.
6. Forgetting the fees. Commission, payment, service and shipping program fees add up. Check your platform's current fee schedule for your category in each country, because rates have changed often.
7. No one owns the account. Campaigns drift when nobody checks them weekly. Someone must own the numbers.

Get a Retail Media Plan Built for Your Brand

Retail media in Asia can turn ad spend into measurable orders, but only if the listings, budgets and creative are built for each market. That is the work we do every day: native-language listings, ads on Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop and Grab, and one accountable team that owns the results. We also back our work with a 60-Day Results Guarantee: if you see no measurable results in 60 days, we keep working free until you do.

If you want a clear plan for your products and your first market, book a free strategy call with our team. We will look at your margins, pick the right platforms and show you where your first dollars should go.