The question facing chief marketing officers (CMOs) across the Gulf is no longer simply whether to invest in digital or traditional media. As consumers move between social platforms, streaming services, search engines, physical environments and AI-powered assistants, marketers must decide how to distribute budgets across an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
The shift is already reflected in regional advertising figures. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) digital advertising market reached $8.185 billion in 2025, growing 17.8% year on year, according to IAB MENA’s digital advertising expenditure report published in June 2026.
Social advertising grew 19.3%, while social video increased 23.6%. Connected television (CTV), which delivers television content over internet-connected devices, recorded 31% growth. Retail media advertising expanded by as much as 40.5%, according to the industry body’s findings.
The figures point to a market in which digital investment is expanding beyond conventional search and social advertising. They also raise a strategic question for GCC marketers: how much of the budget should go towards established channels, and how much should be reserved for emerging formats and technologies?
Digital leads, but the media mix is diversifying
WPP Media’s 2025 mid-year advertising forecast for MENA projected the regional advertising market to grow 8% in 2025. Digital pure-play advertising, including social and other digital formats as well as retail media, was expected to account for 65.9% of total regional advertising revenue.
Retail media was forecast to grow 18.1% to $434 million in 2025, while streaming advertising was projected to increase 25.8%. Search advertising was expected to grow 11.9%, reflecting its continued importance as consumers research products and services.
The distinction between these channels matters to marketers. Social platforms offer audience targeting and engagement, search captures consumers expressing an interest in a product or service, while retail media can connect advertising exposure more directly to purchasing behaviour.
Retail media allows retailers and commerce platforms to monetise their customer relationships and first-party data by selling advertising placements to brands. For FMCG, beauty and consumer electronics companies, it can offer a way to reach shoppers closer to the point of purchase.
However, attribution remains a challenge. Advertisers must determine whether a campaign generated incremental sales or simply claimed credit for purchases that would have occurred anyway.
The regional figures cover MENA, not the GCC alone, and should not be treated as a direct measure of spending by Gulf-based advertisers. Nevertheless, they offer a useful indication of the channels attracting growing investment across the wider market.
OOH moves towards programmatic buying
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising remains an important part of the media mix, particularly in Gulf markets where airports, shopping malls, major roads and destination developments provide high-visibility environments for brands.
The channel is also becoming more closely integrated with digital media planning. Digital out-of-home (DOOH) allows advertisers to change creative according to time, location and campaign requirements, while programmatic DOOH enables inventory to be bought and sold through automated advertising systems.
WPP Media’s 2025 MENA forecast projected OOH advertising revenue to grow 12.7% that year. Programmatic digital formats were expected to account for 38.6% of OOH revenue.
The development gives marketers another way to combine physical reach with data-led campaign planning. Rather than treating outdoor advertising as a separate, static channel, brands can increasingly coordinate digital screens with online campaigns and audience strategies.
The challenge is to establish whether the additional investment delivers incremental reach and measurable brand impact, rather than simply duplicating exposure across channels.
The walled-garden problem
The growth of digital advertising has also increased marketers’ dependence on large technology platforms, including Google, Meta, TikTok and Amazon. These companies provide access to substantial audiences and sophisticated targeting tools, but much of their advertising activity takes place within closed ecosystems.
For CMOs, this creates a trade-off. Platforms can offer efficient campaign optimisation and detailed performance dashboards, but comparing results across providers is difficult when each uses different attribution methods and measurement systems.
The problem becomes more complicated as brands distribute spending across social video, search, retail media, connected television and other digital channels. A campaign may generate exposure on one platform, engagement on another and a purchase through a third.
Without independent measurement, marketers risk overestimating the contribution of individual platforms or allocating budgets based on results that cannot be compared consistently.
The question is therefore not simply which platform delivers the lowest cost per click or the highest reported return on advertising spend. It is which combination of channels generates the greatest incremental business impact.
LLMs introduce a new discovery question
Artificial intelligence adds another dimension to the media-planning debate. Consumers are increasingly able to use conversational AI tools to research products, compare alternatives and obtain recommendations, creating new questions about how brands appear in the discovery process.
Google has already expanded AI-powered search experiences. In May 2025, the company said AI Overviews were available in more than 200 countries and territories and in over 40 languages, including Arabic. Google also reported increased search usage for query types displaying AI Overviews in its largest markets, including the United States and India.
The commercial implications extend beyond conventional search optimisation. Marketers must consider how their brands are represented in AI-generated answers, whether their websites and product information are accessible to these systems, and how to measure the resulting traffic and conversions.
Paid advertising is also entering the conversational AI environment. OpenAI began testing advertisements in ChatGPT in the United States in February 2026, subsequently announcing plans to expand the pilot into additional markets.
However, the emergence of advertising opportunities within AI products should not be confused with evidence that LLMs already command a substantial share of GCC media budgets. Their eventual role will depend on consumer adoption, advertising availability, measurement capabilities and whether brands can demonstrate a return on investment.
For now, marketers face two distinct tasks: protecting their visibility in AI-driven discovery and deciding when paid investment in these environments is justified.
From channel selection to budget accountability
For GCC CMOs, the challenge is to build a media mix around business objectives rather than chase individual platforms or formats.
That requires comparing the contribution of brand-building channels such as OOH and video with performance-led investments in search, social and retail media. It also means establishing consistent measurement across platforms and testing emerging channels before committing substantial budgets.
The next stage of the debate is likely to focus less on whether digital, outdoor or AI deserves priority in isolation and more on how each channel contributes to the customer journey.
For marketers, the decisive question is not which medium is newest or growing fastest. It is where the next unit of investment can deliver measurable incremental reach, stronger brand consideration or additional sales — and how confidently that result can be demonstrated.
