Most of the US retail media community has never heard of one of the largest retail media networks in the world. Mercado Ads, the advertising business of Mercado Libre, brought in roughly $600 million last quarter, a run rate above $2 billion, growing about 70% with around 100,000 advertisers.

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Jesús Moreno Sosa, who leads Mercado Ads, joins The Middlemen after meeting Tom at Cannes. A mechanical engineer and lawyer by training, he spent 13 years in consulting before moving into advertising and joined Mercado Libre a little over two years ago. The company is the largest e-commerce player in Latin America and, through Mercado Pago, one of the region's largest fintechs, with more than $22 billion in GMV and over $100 billion in payments last quarter.

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For small and mid-sized sellers, the formula is simplicity. Mercado Ads cut its self-serve lineup to two products. Product Ads asks sellers for three things: which items, what budget, and what ROAS target. The platform handles the rest across on-site and off-site placements, including Google. Todd compared it to the AppLovin playbook. Follower Ads lets sellers win followers with a coupon and then reach them with notifications and offers later, and AI-generated horizontal video carries those coupons onto Mercado Play, the company's own streaming service.

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The most unusual piece is the affiliate engine. Mercado Libre built a network of more than 7 million creators and affiliates, down to people sharing products with friends on WhatsApp, and turned it into a performance channel brands can buy with the same budget and ROAS controls. The tech keeps campaigns running when one seller runs out of stock and another sells the same product, and Mercado Pago handles creator payouts. Tom and Todd tried to build something similar at a Shopify startup years ago, which is part of why this one landed.

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For enterprise advertisers, Mercado Ads built its own DSP despite being told it was crazy to try. It connects to Google, runs CTV with Disney+, HBO Max, Roku and Mercado Play with deduplication across surfaces, and uses Engage Plus, an AI product with predictive audiences, to optimize branding campaigns toward outcomes like new-to-brand with full attribution. A TikTok partnership closes the loop from social campaigns to purchases on Mercado Libre. The ads and marketing teams report to the same leader, so what the company learns as one of the region's biggest advertisers flows into the product.

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Mercado Ads is now in its third year of upfronts across Mexico, Buenos Aires and Brazil, pitching flagship 360 campaigns and co-branded Formula 1 cars alongside its media products.

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Next up: social commerce treated as measurable media, AI that ties upper-funnel spend to retail results, and payment rails that make ads interactive, starting with redeemable coupons on Mercado Play. Pair a creator's commission with a coupon for the shopper, Moreno Sosa argues, and conversion compounds.