Retail media is emerging as one of the most consequential shifts in advertising across the Gulf. What began largely as sponsored placements on e-commerce sites is rapidly expanding into a broader ecosystem spanning retailer websites and apps, search results, loyalty programmes, social platforms and, increasingly, digital screens inside physical stores.
The opportunity is particularly significant in the GCC because retailers sit on something advertisers increasingly value: first-party purchase and behavioural data. McKinsey describes retail media in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as still nascent, but says momentum is accelerating as retailers improve data capabilities, customer insights and e-grocery traffic. Globally, advanced retail-media businesses can generate margins of 40–50% and incremental revenues equivalent to 1–3% of retail sales.
The global opportunity also helps explain the urgency in the Gulf. Amazon estimates that retail-media advertising worldwide will reach $196.7 billion in 2026, equivalent to 16% of total global advertising expenditure.
The GCC advantage
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are natural centres of gravity for retail media in the region. Both have highly developed digital-commerce ecosystems, sophisticated consumer markets and retailers with substantial physical and digital footprints.
Amazon, for example, has progressively expanded sophisticated advertising and measurement capabilities in the two markets. Its Marketing Mix Modeling feed is available in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, allowing advertisers and agencies to incorporate Amazon advertising and retail signals into broader marketing measurement. Amazon’s conversion-path reporting is also available to advertisers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, among other markets.
Noon is another major player. Its advertising operation says its platform reaches consumers across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, while offering targeting across multiple consumer touchpoints and real-time performance insights. The company says more than 10,000 brands and sellers are currently advertising on noon.
This is important because retail media is not simply another display-advertising channel. Its fundamental proposition is proximity to the transaction. A consumer searching for shampoo, browsing smartphones or comparing televisions is already signalling commercial intent. The retailer can therefore sell brands access to audiences at a point much closer to purchase than conventional awareness media.
Carrefour turns the store into media
Perhaps the clearest illustration of where GCC retail media is heading is Majid Al Futtaim’s Precision Media.
Launched in 2024, Precision Media was created as a dedicated retail-media business within Majid Al Futtaim Retail. Its proposition extends across the company’s Carrefour stores and e-commerce assets. At launch, Majid Al Futtaim said the network covered 450 Carrefour and grocery stores in 13 countries, with access to 600 million annual physical visitors, 270 million online sessions and 20.5 million loyalty-programme members. More than 150 brands and agencies were already using the ecosystem.
The scale has since been packaged as a 360-degree retail-media proposition. Precision Media currently says its network spans 14 countries, more than 450 Carrefour stores, 600 million-plus annual customers and 20.5 million loyalty members, generating more than 40 billion product impressions annually. It also says its UAE database contains more than six million customers.
The significance is that the “retail media network” is no longer confined to a website.
In May 2025, Precision Media partnered with AI company Advertima to introduce AI-powered audience intelligence into Carrefour stores in the UAE. Sensor technology can identify characteristics of shoppers in-store and allow digital screens to deliver more relevant advertising in real time. The objective is to connect online audience data with physical-store behaviour and create an omnichannel media proposition.
A month later, Precision Media and Publicis Media Middle East announced a partnership giving Publicis clients access to 212 digital screens across 25 Carrefour hypermarkets in the UAE, with sensor-based AI technology supporting audience targeting. Majid Al Futtaim said the network reaches more than six million unique customers.
The model is also moving into Saudi Arabia. In July 2025, Precision Media partnered with Ritelo, the retail-media technology platform from ArabyAds, to expand omnichannel advertising across Carrefour’s digital platforms in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Why brands are paying attention
For consumer packaged goods companies, retail media offers three particularly attractive propositions: targeting, proximity and measurement.
Traditional advertising can establish awareness but may struggle to demonstrate precisely whether exposure translated into a purchase. Retail media can connect advertising exposure to shopping behaviour and, in many cases, sales. Amazon’s retail-media reporting, for example, includes impressions, clicks, cost-per-click, attributed sales and return on advertising spend.
That closed-loop capability is particularly valuable as marketers demand greater accountability from media budgets.
It also creates a new commercial relationship between retailers and suppliers. Retailers are no longer simply selling shelf space and distribution; they can monetise the shopper relationship itself. Loyalty programmes become media assets because they provide permissioned first-party signals about shopping behaviour.
This is why McKinsey argues that the development of sophisticated loyalty programmes is closely linked to retail-media growth in MENA. Better customer data enables retailers to offer more personalised audiences and gives brands a more precise way to target consumers.
The next battleground: omnichannel
The biggest opportunity for GCC retailers may ultimately be to erase the distinction between online and offline retail media.
A consumer might see a sponsored product while searching a retailer’s app, receive a personalised message through a loyalty ecosystem, encounter an AI-targeted screen while visiting the store and then complete the purchase at the physical checkout. The retailer can potentially connect those interactions and provide brands with a clearer picture of the customer journey.
That is the direction in which Precision Media is moving, combining on-site, off-site and in-store inventory with first-party data and measurement.
For GCC advertisers, therefore, retail media should no longer be treated as a niche performance-marketing tactic. It is becoming a strategic layer connecting commerce, data, media and measurement.
The challenge will be ensuring that the industry develops with transparent measurement, responsible use of customer data and clear separation between paid visibility and organic product discovery. But if GCC retailers can successfully turn their enormous customer relationships into measurable media ecosystems, retail media could become one of the region’s most important new advertising businesses — and a significant new profit engine for retailers themselves.
