Xnurta Taps WPP Veteran for European Push in AI Ad Race

BELLEVUE, WA – March 26, 2026 – Agentic AI advertising platform Xnurta has appointed former WPP executive Luis Pedro Martinez as its Managing Director for Europe, a strategic move signaling an aggressive expansion into the continent's booming and complex retail media market. The London-based appointment places a seasoned industry leader at the helm of Xnurta's efforts to capture a significant share of a market projected to surpass €30 billion by 2028.

Martinez’s arrival comes as brands and agencies grapple with a rapidly evolving landscape, marked by the decline of third-party cookies, the fragmentation of retail media networks, and the urgent need for sophisticated, AI-driven solutions. Xnurta is betting that its agentic AI technology, combined with Martinez's deep agency and commerce experience, is the key to unlocking this lucrative but challenging market.

The European Retail Media Gold Rush

Europe's retail media sector is experiencing explosive growth, expanding four times faster than the total advertising market in 2023. Forecasts predict spending will more than double over the next five years, creating a high-stakes environment for tech platforms, agencies, and brands. This surge is fueled by the immense value of first-party data in a post-cookie world. With over 90% of advertisers now partnering with retailers to access direct customer insights, the ability to effectively manage campaigns across disparate platforms has become a critical competitive advantage.

However, the opportunity is fraught with complexity. The European market is highly fragmented, with over 100 distinct retail media networks operating across the UK and EU. While Amazon commands a dominant share of ad spend, estimated at 60-70%, a powerful long tail of local grocery chains like Carrefour and Tesco, alongside regional e-commerce giants like Allegro in Poland and Bol.com in the Netherlands, creates a bewildering ecosystem for advertisers.

Compounding this challenge is the stringent regulatory environment, with GDPR setting a high bar for data privacy and consumer consent. Navigating this requires not only technological prowess but also a nuanced understanding of local market dynamics. In response, industry bodies like IAB Europe have been pushing for standardization, releasing recommendations for measurement in early 2024 to bring much-needed consistency and transparency. It is into this dynamic and demanding arena that Xnurta is making its decisive play.

A Strategic Appointment: The Martinez Factor

In Luis Pedro Martinez, Xnurta has secured a leader whose career has traced the very evolution of the commerce media industry. His background represents what Xnurta CEO Kashif Zafar calls a "rare combination of deep technical expertise and hands-on experience scaling commerce within global agencies." This blend is precisely what is needed to bridge the gap between advanced AI technology and the practical needs of global brands and their agency partners.

Martinez’s journey began at the heart of the digital ecosystem, with foundational roles at Microsoft and Amazon, where he spent a decade at the intersection of data, infrastructure, and the nascent retail media space. This early experience provided him with a ground-level view of the mechanics that power modern e-commerce.

He then moved to the agency world, joining Jellyfish and scaling its Amazon practice into one of Europe's largest, managing over $100 million in media spend. This success created a model that would later become a cornerstone for commerce capabilities within the world's largest advertising company, WPP. At WPP Media UK, as a Vice President, Martinez was a key figure in shaping the group's commerce media strategy, tripling his team from 20 to 65 specialists and consolidating the practice. His leadership came during a period of transformation where retail media was evolving from a pure performance channel to a crucial component of full-funnel brand building.

"Commerce media is entering a new phase where AI is not just optimizing campaigns, but driving decision-making," Martinez stated, highlighting his vision. "Xnurta is built natively for that future." His move to the tech platform side underscores a belief that the next wave of innovation will be driven by specialized, AI-first companies.

The Tech Advantage: Agentic AI in a Fragmented Market

Xnurta's core proposition is its "agentic AI," a technology designed to move beyond simple automation to proactive decision-making. This is particularly relevant for the fragmented European market where managing campaigns across dozens of retail networks is a significant operational burden. The platform’s AI Copilot, which already powers over two million bidding decisions per day on Amazon and Walmart, is engineered to handle this complexity at scale.

The company's technology stack also includes its AMC Hub, an analytics tool designed to help brands make sense of their data without needing a team of data scientists. With a drag-and-drop interface and no-code models, it aims to democratize access to sophisticated audience creation and measurement—a critical need as advertisers shift focus from simple Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) to deeper metrics around insights and incrementality.

This focus on both intelligent automation and accessible analytics positions Xnurta directly against established tech providers like Criteo and Skai, as well as a host of other platforms such as Moloco and Topsort, all of which are racing to integrate AI into their offerings. Xnurta's two consecutive Amazon Technology Innovation Awards give it a strong validation point in a crowded field. By expanding its full-funnel support to new European Amazon marketplaces in Poland, Belgium, and Sweden, and partnering with eCommerce accelerators like Front Row, the company is laying the groundwork for its technology to be deployed across the continent. Martinez's role will be to translate this technological potential into tangible market share.

The Agency Brain Drain and the Future of Advertising

Martinez's transition from a leadership role at WPP to a specialized tech firm is a powerful illustration of a wider industry trend: the migration of top talent from traditional agency holding companies to agile, AI-native platforms. This "brain drain" highlights a fundamental shift in the advertising industry's center of gravity. As AI becomes the primary engine of media planning, execution, and measurement, the companies building that AI are becoming increasingly influential.

For years, global agencies have been the strategic nexus for brands, but they now face the challenge of competing for talent with the very tech firms their business models increasingly depend on. While WPP and other holding companies continue to invest heavily in their own commerce capabilities—WPP's active leadership role in IAB Europe's commerce committees is a clear example—the departure of key figures like Martinez poses a challenge to their strategic roadmaps.

This talent flow signifies that deep, specialized expertise in AI and data science is becoming the industry's most valuable currency. The future of retail media will likely be defined by a new ecosystem of partnerships between brands, the remaining agency strategists, and the powerful, AI-driven platforms that can navigate the complexity of the modern commerce landscape. With Martinez at the helm of its European operations, Xnurta has positioned itself not just to participate in that future, but to actively shape it.