How to Balance User Experience with Ads

How did a marketing leader turn fashion into a retail media powerhouse? In this episode of Trillion Dollar Ads, I chat with Alin Dobrea, who shares his journey from starting in London’s ad agencies to leading Zalora’s marketing services in Southeast Asia. Alin talks about building a business from scratch, navigating the fast-growing world of retail media, and offering brands a full 360° marketing solution. If you’re curious about what it takes to succeed in this dynamic space, this conversation is one you won’t want to miss!

Discussion Topics: How to Balance User Experience with Ads

• How did Alin Dobrea’s journey in retail media begin?
• The secret behind Asia Pacific’s growing retail media trend
• What makes Southeast Asian customers so unique?
• How does Zalora’s 360° approach set them apart from competitors?
• The power of blending influencer marketing with retail media
• Surprising partnerships: What do energy drinks and fashion have in common?
• The tough choices behind balancing customer experience with advertising
• A game-changing moment that convinced brands to embrace retail media
• Why 360° marketing is the future of retail media
• The next big thing in retail media: Will offline and online collide?

Your Host: Jayesh Easwaramony

APAC Digital Advertising & Martech Specialist | Founder, Spectra Global
Jayesh is a leading expert in APAC’s digital advertising and martech landscape and founder of Spectra Global, a consulting firm that helps media, telcos, and retailers accelerate adtech transformation and monetize data through cost-efficient platforms, growth marketing automation, and personalized CX strategies. Previously, he scaled InMobi across APAC, positioning it as a bold alternative to Big Tech by securing deals with top advertisers, agencies, and publishers, while executing over $400M in ad campaigns. He also led the award-winning Capstone team, which won over 60 awards for pioneering advancements in AR, chatbot, and location-based ads, blending data and creativity.

Our Guest: Alin Dobrea

Alin Dobrea is a marketing and digital director with over thirteen years of experience in building and scaling brands. He is currently the Group Marketing and Platform Services Director at ZALORA, one of the largest fashion, sports, and beauty e-commerce platforms in Asia.

In this role, Alin is responsible for leading and growing ZALORA’s in-house marketing agency and retail media network, ZALORA Advertising Platform (ZAP). ZAP is a self-service ad tech platform that allows brands to reach millions of consumers based in Asia. This is made possible by enabling brands to benefit from ZALORA’s extensive media buying, data science and tech capabilities. Under Alin’s leadership, ZAP has built a specialist team of growth, product, and operations marketers to drive revenue for the business and work with hundreds of brands on the platform on user acquisition, retention, and loyalty for both B2C and B2B segments.