A new trend is brewing in retail media. Undoubtedly aided by the emergence of artificial intelligence, advertisers are today looking beyond traditional linear sales methods like TV, print or even outdoor. Not knowing who bought what, when or how much of a product is being sold in marketplaces is now in total misalignment with a new world order in sales that seeks immediate returns from ads, pitches and promotions.
Brands are simply shying away from ad formats that fail to address CPGs’ and other retail sectors’ strict budget allocations and won’t adhere to campaigns’ ROI expectations.
The CPG marketing landscapes in 2026 are witnessing an evolution that innovates consumer targeting driven by expanding presence on retail media networks (RMNs), omni-channel integration, and actionable AI-led first-party data-centric metrics.
RMNs & CPG Spend
Entire sales ecosystems are manifesting change with RMNs (Retail Media Network). These networks are advertising platforms owned by retailers like Amazon and others that allow third party brands to purchase ad space on their channels using first party data where customers are reached at the point of purchase. They turn their own digital footprints (websites, apps, blogs, etc.) into ad spaces for brands, just as customers get ready to make a purchase.
Brands need no longer follow consumers around tracking their cookies. Their closed loop attributions allow RMNs to not only validate the purchase but also precisely tabulate how many of the items were bought in real time and by whom, something TV or standalone ads fail to achieve.
WPP Media reports that commerce/retail media revenues of $178 billion surpassed total TV ad revenues in 2025. It said digital formats now command nearly 83 percent of total CPG spend, with traditional print continuing its decline at a -3 percent rate in 2026.
“RMNs have matured into an always-on, performance-measured medium that anchors most integrated campaigns. Online inventory generated over 77 percent of retail media spend in 2025,” said a recent Mordor Intelligence report.
Linking advertising directly to sales outcomes is a capability that has rapidly drawn CPG spend away from unmeasurable channels, shifting RMNs from niche performance tools to core components of omni-channel marketing strategies.
“Protected spend sits in retail media, always-on performance, and local creator partnerships. The shift is away from generalists toward teams that can execute across retail, creator, and performance as one plan,” said Nick Walsh, Founder and CEO of Migrate, a Dubai-based consultancy launched in 2025.
CPG brands are allocating 25–30 percent of digital budgets to retail media as measurement improves, according to the Retail Media Market Guide, 2025.
SAP, a world leading provider of enterprise application software (ERP), said that nearly one in three consumers now buy brands they first discovered on social media, making shoppable posts a standard requirement for 2026 budgets.
Retail media’s omnichannel growth
According to WARC’s most recent Future of Commerce Media report, global retail media spend was on track to reach $175 billion in 2025, a 13.7 percent increase year-on-year, while in 2026, spending is forecast to climb to $196.7 billion, accounting for roughly 16 percent of all global advertising spend.
While this ad spend will mostly run through various RMNs, market observers say retail media is additionally expanding into comprehensive omni-channel frameworks that include off-site advertising, in-store digital signage, connected TV integrations (CTV), and personalized experiences.
“Advertisers will spend just shy of $5 billion on retail media CTV in 2025… This is more than a quarter of all retail media display and nearly 22 percent of CTV ad spending overall,” a 2025 Emarketer report said.
Investment in analytics and AI tools that support attribution, audience segmentation, and predictive personalization is now a key priority. RMNs are increasingly incorporating AI features that improve creative relevance and audience discovery, helping brands simplify and optimize spend and measure outcomes that match performance KPIs tied to conversions and purchase patterns.
“AI adoption at global CPG organizations dramatically surged, especially in operations where scale, structured data, and repeatable processes exist. These applications include internal reporting automation, performance monitoring, demand planning support, and service-related workflows,” Hussein Safiedine, Media Director at Al Rabiaa TV Network, Iraq, said.
The GCC picture
A February 2026 data from WPP Media (GroupM) and Mordor Intelligence indicated that the GCC advertising and marketing sectors were valued at approximately $8.18 billion in 2025, on their way to exceeding $8.56 billion in 2026.
A shift towards digital and precision advertising is not foreign to the GCC, yet driven by unique developments. It has gone beyond programmatic advertising (automated buying) that drove over 70 percent of display and video spend in key Gulf markets, according to PwC Middle East, projecting the MENA programmatic to reach $21.6 billion by the end of 2026.
Omni-channel priorities in GCC follow global trends where brands are integrating data from mobile, ecommerce, in-store visits, and loyalty programs, banking on the UAE and Saudi having some of the highest smartphone and social media penetration rates in the world at near 100 percent.
Meanwhile, Saudi Vision 2030 and the UAE D33 Agenda have invested billions into digital infrastructure, turning major cities like Riyadh and Dubai into ‘AdTech sandboxes’ for local, regional and international brands. Huge in-app shopping platforms like Noon and Carrefour are now leading to a massive shift in budgets toward RMNs in the GCC.
Precision Media, a dedicated advanced omnichannel RMN owned and operated by Majid Al Futtaim, owns the exclusive rights to Carrefour in the UAE and beyond, enjoying 6 million+ shoppers. In 2026, equipped with 3D sensors and AI screens, Carrefour hypermarkets can detect, say, a young professional aisle shopping, prompting the screens to instantly show an ad for a healthy energy drink or a tech gadget, while also tracking if that person later saw the ad on their app, purchased it online or in a physical/phygital store.
Often called the ‘Amazon of the Arab World’, Noon, a Saudi PIF project launched as a super-app and e-commerce ecosystem, has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar advertising and digital engine that powers everything from grocery delivery to fintech. Looking to reach audiences in Saudi and the UAE, Noon’s 2026 Agentic AI is uniquely optimized for Arabic dialects.
According to the latest Research and Markets and Mordor Intelligence reports for February 2026, Saudi Arabia’s digital ad spend has surged past the $2 billion mark and is currently on track to hit $4.68 billion by the end of 2026.
On this note, technology and beverages are forecast to be among the fastest-growing ad sectors in 2026, with beverages projected to grow by 10 percent, according to Dentsu.
“The Middle East is not just a fast-follower anymore. With the rollout of in-store AI sensors and bilingual agentic commerce, the GCC is setting a global benchmark for how digital and physical retail media should work together,” Amer El Hajj, the CEO of WPP Media – Mena, said in 2026.
Imen Chatti, Founder, INTERCULT BRANDS, an international branding and design consultancy, Paris, France, does point at a caveat:
“The GCC market is highly fragmented. The issue isn’t access to technology; it’s stitching identity and measurement together. The GCC purchase journey is genuinely non-linear. The problem is that activity is spread across walled gardens, modern trade, traditional trade, retail platforms and messaging apps, creating disconnected data flows.”
She added that concrete signals show the scale of the issue:
“In the UAE, 63 percent of marketers say they are concerned about brand suitability on social platforms. Operationally, around one-third say managing campaigns across multiple channels and calculating ROI are among their biggest challenges.”
What CPG clients are prioritizing
CPG clients in 2026 are prioritizing Agentic AI and ‘Data Clean Rooms’ that allow for hyper-personalization without compromising privacy, reflecting the “Big Data” mandate for CPG firms in early 2026, issued as industry outlooks by Tata Consultancy Services, Veeva Systems, and Kellanova (formerly Kellogg’s).
“AI allows CPG companies to merge first-party sales data with real-time factors like weather, promotions, and local market signals. This shifts forecasting from static to predictive. For example, we apply SKU-level forecasting to reduce stockouts and overproduction across export-driven categories, improving service levels in volatile demand windows,” Mohamed Itani, CEO, United Foods Company, a Dubai-based public shareholding food manufacturing and distribution company.
Global AI spending is forecast to exceed $2 trillion in 2026, growing 36.8 percent from 2025, according to Gartner.
SAP said nearly nine in 10 CPG marketers believe AI is critical for acquiring and retaining customers in 2026.
Deloitte’s 2026 Global Outlook highlights a structural shift toward value-seeking behaviors. Some 70 percent of retail executives plan to expand value-priced assortments, and 46 percent are focusing on enhancing omnichannel experiences to build trust through personalization.
Deloitte said 47 percent of consumers are now considered ‘value seekers’ requiring brands to invest more in loyalty and personalization rather than broad discounts, despite the fact that KPMG reports only about half of consumers feel comfortable sharing personal data for personalized offers.
Finally, if we are to keep things in perspective, one thing has remained unchanged in this digital omnichannel retail revolution.
A joint study released in October 2025 by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Happy Returns (a UPS company) said that retailers expected 15.8 percent of sales to be returned in 2025, costing nearly $850 billion.
No matter how well CPG brands reach audiences in various markets using omnichannel means or via personalization, consumers will always return products that don’t meet the ads’ brand promise. Retailers risk losing the trust of consumers if they don’t back up their claims.
The issue of massive returns could also mean that brands need to invest in ‘better fit’ AI tools to protect margins. AI is too smart not to figure this one out. The rest is up to brands.
(For more insightful interviews and articles, read the special The FMCG Crisis Playbook issue of Communicate in full here)
