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Influencer marketing moves beyond follower counts. What it means for MENA brands

Influencer marketing is entering a more fragmented and culturally nuanced phase, with brands increasingly looking beyond follower counts and headline engagement rates to find creators who…

INSIGHTS

OpenAI expands ChatGPT advertising to MENA as ad business reaches $1bn run rate

OpenAI’s advertising business has reached a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate as the company expands its ChatGPT Ads offering to the Middle East and North…

NEWS

Splurge or Save, Never Both: UAE & KSA Shoppers Are Living a Double Life

Shoppers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are living a double life — one where they’ll happily splash out on the newest gadget or premium brand,…

INSIGHTS

At Cannes Lions, TikTok brought marketers back to what actually works

At a festival obsessed with the future, TikTok invited marketers to revisit something much older: the fundamentals. While Cannes Lions 2026 was dominated by AI announcements,…

BRANDS
Branded

From Homepage to Doorstep: How Lenovo’s Omnichannel Campaign with Amazon Ads Drove Success During Peak Shopping Season

By Communicate Staff

Transparency in the storm: How the GCC managed crisis communication

By Hoda Rizk

Ounass expands into physical retail activations with Stage

By Communicate Staff

Aramco remains Middle East’s sole entrant in Kantar BrandZ global top 100

By Communicate Staff
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MY WEEK IN ADLAND: Karl Marx and The End of Advertising

Sir Martin Sorrell pulled off a great stunt in the early 2000s. He called a press conference and claimed that WPP had developed software that could…

THE-VIEW

AI is taking over MENA’s creator economy — and it’s just getting started

AI adoption among creators is no longer an experiment. Across the global creator economy, artificial intelligence is becoming part of the everyday production stack, helping creators…

INSIGHTS

Beyond the social sprint: What MENA brands can learn from the new rules of social-first marketing

Social has become one of the fastest ways for brands to connect with audiences, creators, and culture across MENA. From creator partnerships and short-form video to…

AGENCIES

What Advertisers Expect from Media Partners in 2026

A few years ago, a media plan could stand on reach and frequency alone. A brand booked spots, a media owner delivered impressions, and everyone reported…

THE-VIEW

Samsung, Spotify and the Case for Invisible Marketing

Since the Mad Men era, marketers have largely been trained to think in campaigns: build the big idea, distribute it across channels, measure the response, then…

BRANDS

The Growth Story Has Changed. Has Your Agency Model?

By Nick Walsh At the beginning of this year, the Middle East story was overwhelmingly about growth. Record visitor numbers, new capacity, sold-out venues, double-digit ambitions,…

AGENCIES

The New Brand Advantage: Why the Smartest Brands Are Designing With Creatives, Not Just Hiring Them

For years, brands across the GCC have been chasing the same elusive goal: creating work that feels authentically local without slipping into clichés. Today, that challenge…

NEWS

How a 7,500-Name Email List Saved a Dubai Soap Brand When Tourism Slowed Overnight

The number that should stop every CMO mid-scroll isn’t 22,500, the bars of soap; it’s 95. That’s the percentage of revenue The Camel Soap Factory lost…

BRANDS

The Sameness Trap: Why AI Is Making Brands Sound Identical

By Professor Stoyan Stoyanov Marketing teams across the Gulf have spent two years solving a real problem: more content, in more languages, across more channels, at…

THE-VIEW
Trends
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