Managing Director · Havas Market UK

Alex Walker

Strategic leadership in performance marketing, retail media & AI-driven commerce

Alex Walker, Managing Director of Havas Market UK

About

25 years at the frontier of digital commerce

Alex Walker is Managing Director of Havas Market UK, a 150-person performance marketing and commerce agency within Havas Media Network — named Performance Marketing Agency of the Year by PMW and Silver at Campaign's UK Agency of the Year Awards. He leads a team spanning paid search, SEO, retail media, social commerce, marketplaces, and data and analytics. He leads with clear reasoning and decisive judgement — setting direction firmly, then giving his teams the room to deliver.

Alex founded Expert Edge in 2016, building it into a leading e-commerce consultancy before its acquisition by Havas Group in 2022. Prior to that he was a Senior Product Manager at Amazon UK and COO at WeFarm. He began his career founding Indigo Clothing — a custom printing and promotional merchandise business — while an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge.

He holds an MBA from HEC Paris and serves on the IAB UK Retail Media Working Group. A big-picture thinker who is comfortable with complexity and ambiguity, he reads structural shifts early and is willing to challenge accepted thinking when he sees a better way — the instinct behind his early, frequent commentary on the move from SEO to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and the impact of AI on how people search, discover and buy. He is a regular contributor to industry publications including The Media Leader, Campaign, The Drum, and The Grocer.

Based in Yorkshire, he is a long-distance runner, cyclist, and builder of AI tools.

Career

Experience

Recognition

Awards & lists

Speaking

Speaking engagements

Expertise

Areas of focus

Alex is a practitioner and public voice across performance marketing, retail media, and the application of AI to commerce. He is at his best unravelling complex, fast-moving problems into a clear line of action, and his current thinking centres on how large language models are reshaping search and discovery — and what that means for brands and agencies.

Retail Media Performance Marketing Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) Amazon Advertising E-commerce Strategy Social Commerce AI in Marketing Marketplaces Paid Search Data & Analytics Commerce M&A Agency Leadership

Approach

How he works

Sees the pattern first. Alex is at his strongest with complex, ambiguous problems — the kind without a settled playbook. He works at the level of patterns and structural shifts, spotting the underlying trend before it is obvious and turning it into a clear direction.

Rigorous and decisive. He pairs that wide-angle view with an objective, rational read of the facts, and the judgement to weigh more analysis against the cost of waiting. When a call needs making, he makes it.

Challenges the orthodoxy. Alex doesn't defer to convention for its own sake. When he sees a better way he will make the case for it — the reason he tends to be early to the shifts that reshape a market, from retail media to Generative Engine Optimisation.

Press & Publications

In the media

Contact

Get in touch

For speaking opportunities, media enquiries, or to discuss performance marketing and commerce strategy.

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