By: Claude Sonnet 4.5
Majid Al Futtaim’s Carrefour UAE deployed artificial intelligence sensors across its hypermarket network in May 2025, transforming physical grocery aisles into programmable advertising environments where brands can target shoppers with the same precision they’ve grown accustomed to online. The rollout, executed through the retailer’s Precision Media network in partnership with Swiss technology provider Advertima, represents more than an incremental improvement to in-store marketing. It signals that retail media, the practice of retailers selling advertising inventory powered by their customer purchase data, has crossed from experimental to operational in the Gulf’s most mature markets. For marketers who have spent the past decade mastering programmatic display, social targeting, and search optimization, this development demands strategic recalibration. The retailers they’ve historically viewed as distribution partners are now direct competitors for media budgets, armed with transaction data that reveals not what consumers say they’ll buy, but what they actually purchase.
The momentum behind this shift is substantial. Middle East retail media platform spending reached one point one billion dollars in 2025, according to market intelligence provider Ken Research, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt driving the majority of investment due to advanced e-commerce infrastructure and concentrated retail markets. Globally, commerce media is projected to account for fifteen point six percent of all advertising revenue in 2025, overtaking traditional television spend for the first time, per WPP Media’s annual forecast. In MENA, where digital advertising expenditure is expected to climb from three point eight billion dollars in 2024 to over four point one billion by year-end 2025, retail media’s arrival couldn’t be better timed. Privacy regulations are tightening, third-party cookie deprecation continues to erode targeting precision, and marketers need alternatives that deliver both accountability and scale. Retail media offers both, wrapped in an environment where purchase intent isn’t inferred but demonstrated through shopping behavior.
From Shelf Space to Screen Space: The Structural Advantage Retailers Now Hold
The fundamental appeal of retail media rests on a simple premise: retailers possess the most valuable dataset in advertising, a continuous record of what specific households buy, how often they buy it, which brands they substitute, and how price sensitivity influences their decisions. This first-party transactional data remains unaffected by browser changes, app tracking transparency restrictions, or consent management complexity. When Noon, the Dubai-based e-commerce platform backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, sells advertising placements to consumer packaged goods brands across its UAE, Saudi, and Egyptian storefronts, it’s monetizing access to over fifty million monthly users whose shopping journeys are tracked from search through checkout. Advertisers can target households that bought a competitor’s product last month, suppress ads to existing loyal customers, or sequence messaging based on purchase recency. The closed-loop attribution, linking ad exposure directly to basket additions and conversions, eliminates the probabilistic guesswork that plagues most digital advertising.
This data advantage explains why global retail giants have built media networks into billion-dollar revenue streams. Amazon’s advertising business generated fifty-six billion dollars in 2024, making it the third-largest digital advertising platform behind only Google and Meta. Walmart Connect in North America and Alibaba’s retail media ecosystem in China have demonstrated that when retailers control both the media environment and the transaction, they can offer performance guarantees traditional publishers cannot match. MENA retailers, observing these global templates, are now racing to build comparable capabilities. The region’s market structure, dominated by a handful of large retail groups operating across multiple countries, creates natural scale advantages. Majid Al Futtaim operates Carrefour across twelve markets spanning the Middle East, Africa, and Asia with over three hundred ninety stores. When its Precision Media network sells a campaign, brands gain access to millions of weekly shoppers across the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, and beyond through a single buying relationship.
Union Coop, the Dubai-based retail cooperative with thirty branches across the emirate, launched digital advertising capabilities in 2025 as part of a broader modernization push. The retailer, which serves local neighborhoods with a focus on Emirati products and community engagement, now offers brands exemptions from promotional fees, dedicated shelf placement, and free digital advertising across its e-commerce platform and social channels. While Union Coop’s scale is smaller than multinational operators, its neighborhood penetration and focus on middle-income households provide brands with access to segments that premium malls and luxury retailers miss. For FMCG marketers trying to reach Emirati families or drive trial in specific Dubai districts, Union Coop’s retail media offering provides targeting granularity that broadcast or outdoor advertising cannot deliver. The retailer’s partnership with Procter and Gamble’s Pampers brand, which won industry recognition for its community-focused campaign supporting premature babies, demonstrated how retail media can blend commercial objectives with cause marketing in ways that resonate with local values.
The Technology Layer: How AI and Sensors Are Bridging Digital and Physical
The technical infrastructure enabling retail media’s expansion in MENA mirrors global developments but with regional adaptations. Majid Al Futtaim’s Precision Media deployment uses Advertima’s Audience AI technology, which employs visual-spatial sensors to identify shopper demographics in real time. The system detects whether a person approaching a product aisle is part of a family group, a young professional, or a price-conscious bargain hunter, then serves tailored creative to digital screens within the store. This capability, which Carrefour rolled out across its hypermarkets with plans for supermarket expansion, transforms static retail environments into dynamic advertising platforms that adapt to foot traffic patterns throughout the day. A diaper brand can target families with young children during afternoon shopping peaks. A premium skincare line can increase share of voice when its core demographic shops in the evening. The targeting occurs without collecting personally identifiable information, using computer vision to classify shoppers into audience segments that align with standard media buying taxonomies.
The integration extends beyond in-store screens. When Precision Media formed a strategic partnership with Publicis Media Middle East in June 2025, the collaboration granted the agency network’s clients access to two hundred twelve digital screens across twenty-five Carrefour locations, with campaigns managed through unified platforms that connect in-store exposure to online browsing and purchase behavior. A shopper who researches baby products on Carrefour’s e-commerce site might later encounter related promotions when visiting a physical store, with both touchpoints feeding data back to attribution models that calculate incremental lift. Haleon Group’s Sensodyne brand became the first to execute this omnichannel approach, running campaigns that targeted dental care shoppers across digital and physical Carrefour environments simultaneously. The campaign’s performance data, measuring both immediate basket impact and longer-term brand switching, provided closed-loop proof that retail media drives not just awareness but conversion.
The technology stack supporting these capabilities includes digital signage management from providers like Grassfish, campaign orchestration software from Adtrac, and programmatic buying interfaces that allow agencies to activate retail media alongside social, display, and video inventory. For
media planners accustomed to fragmented platforms and incompatible reporting standards, this integrated approach represents significant operational improvement. Rather than managing retail media as a separate channel requiring bespoke contracts and custom reporting, it becomes another line item within unified campaign dashboards. The Middle East retail media platform market, valued at over one billion dollars and growing at double-digit annual rates, now includes established players like Amazon Ads Middle East, Google Ads, Criteo, and regional specialists alongside retailer-owned networks. This competitive ecosystem pushes standardization while driving innovation in targeting, creative formats, and measurement methodologies.
The Budget Reallocation Question: Where Retail Media Investment Comes From
Marketing leaders across MENA are confronting a practical challenge: if retail media deserves investment, which existing channels should contract to fund it. The data emerging from early adopters globally suggests two primary sources. Traditional trade marketing budgets, historically allocated to in-store promotions, shelf placement fees, and point-of-sale materials, represent the most natural fit. Retail media essentially digitizes and enhances these established tactics, offering better targeting, real-time optimization, and clearer attribution than static displays or periodic discounts. For consumer packaged goods brands that routinely dedicate fifteen to twenty percent of marketing budgets to trade spend, shifting a portion to retail media maintains the retailer relationship while gaining digital capabilities. The economics often favor this reallocation. Where a promotional end-cap might cost several thousand dirhams for a two-week placement with uncertain reach, a targeted digital campaign can deliver measurable impressions to specific household segments with performance tracking throughout the purchase funnel.
The second source is performance marketing budgets, particularly search advertising and lower-funnel social campaigns. Retail media’s ability to target consumers at the moment of purchase consideration, when they’re actively browsing product categories or comparing brands, positions it as a direct substitute for search ads. The advantage lies in context. A shopper searching for laundry detergent on Noon’s platform has higher purchase intent than someone conducting a generic Google search. They’re already in buying mode, comparing prices and reading reviews. A sponsored product placement or banner ad at this precise moment captures demand that’s seconds from conversion. For direct-to-consumer brands and e-commerce players operating in competitive categories, this temporal precision justifies premium pricing. Several MENA-based consumer electronics brands have reported that retail media campaigns deliver cost-per-acquisition rates thirty to forty percent lower than equivalent search campaigns, primarily because the audience is pre-qualified by their presence on a shopping platform.
The challenge for multinational brands operating in MENA is that global budget frameworks often lag behind regional media consumption reality. Marketing plans built in Europe or North America may prescribe channel allocations that don’t account for retail media maturity in specific markets. A global CPG company might have guidelines allocating sixty percent to brand-building channels like television and video, thirty percent to performance channels like search and social, and ten percent to trade marketing. If MENA represents five percent of global revenue but retail media has reached fifteen percent market share regionally, the disconnect creates friction. Local teams with flexibility can reallocate faster, but those operating under rigid global mandates may find themselves structurally disadvantaged against regional competitors who’ve moved budgets more aggressively. The window for strategic decision-making is narrow. Retail media networks in MENA are in expansion mode, seeking anchor clients and building advertiser relationships that could persist for years. Brands that establish early partnerships may secure better rates, priority placements, and collaborative product development opportunities that late entrants cannot access.
Measurement Infrastructure and the Attribution Promise
One of retail media’s most compelling value propositions for performance-focused marketers is measurement clarity. Unlike brand advertising, where impact manifests through indirect metrics like awareness lift or consideration shifts, retail media can theoretically connect every impression to downstream transactions. When a shopper sees a sponsored product on Noon and adds it to their basket within the same session, attribution is straightforward. When someone encounters a digital screen ad in Carrefour promoting a snack brand, then purchases that product during checkout fifteen minutes later, the link between exposure and outcome is tight enough to justify incrementality claims. This closed-loop measurement, where the same entity controls both ad delivery and transaction capture, eliminates much of the ambiguity that plagues multi-touch attribution models trying to assign credit across disconnected platforms.
The reality in MENA markets is more textured. Mature retail media networks like Precision Media, which partners with third-party verification providers and integrates with agency attribution platforms, can deliver robust measurement that meets international standards. Emerging networks operated by smaller retailers or newer e-commerce platforms may still be building these capabilities, offering directional performance indicators rather than audit-grade metrics. The fragmentation across the region complicates unified reporting. A brand running retail media campaigns across Noon in the UAE, Carrefour in Egypt, and Amazon Saudi Arabia needs aggregated performance views to understand total campaign impact. Without standardized reporting frameworks or interoperable data connections, marketers face manual consolidation work that undermines efficiency gains.
Industry bodies are working toward solutions. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has published measurement standards and certification frameworks designed to bring consistency to retail media reporting. These guidelines, focused on impression verification, viewability standards, and attribution methodologies, provide templates that MENA networks can adopt to build credibility with multinational advertisers. For brands testing retail media for the first time, the measurement question should not become a barrier to entry. Even imperfect attribution that connects campaigns to sales trends provides more accountability than awareness-focused channels. Post-campaign analysis examining sales velocity changes, market share shifts, and customer acquisition costs can validate retail media effectiveness while more sophisticated measurement infrastructure matures. The key is establishing clear success metrics upfront and building data partnerships with retailers that enable progressive measurement sophistication as spend scales.
The Operational Complexity: Managing Retail Media at Scale
Executing retail media campaigns introduces operational challenges distinct from traditional digital advertising. Each retailer typically operates a proprietary platform with unique creative specifications, targeting parameters, and reporting interfaces. An agency managing campaigns across Noon, Carrefour, and Amazon UAE must navigate three separate systems, each with different minimum spends, campaign setup processes, and optimization tools. This fragmentation creates workflow friction that erodes the efficiency gains retail media promises. Larger agencies have begun building dedicated retail media practices with specialists who manage retailer relationships and platform navigation, but smaller agencies and in-house teams may struggle with the learning curve and resource demands.
The creative requirements also differ from standard digital formats. While banner ads and video pre-rolls follow established specifications across programmatic exchanges, retail media creative must be optimized for shopping context. Product imagery, pricing information, and promotional messaging that works on a Carrefour digital screen needs different treatment than brand storytelling for YouTube or Instagram. The messaging must interrupt shopping journeys without creating friction, providing value rather than distraction. Brands testing retail media for the first time often repurpose existing display creative, then discover that conversion rates suffer because the content wasn’t designed for point-of-purchase context. The most effective retail media creative prioritizes clarity, features prominent pricing, includes clear calls to action, and aligns with the specific product categories shoppers are browsing. Building creative libraries optimized for retail media environments requires upfront investment but pays dividends in campaign performance.
Organizational readiness extends beyond creative production to internal capabilities. Marketing teams structured around traditional channels – with separate managers for social, search, video, and programmatic – may lack clear ownership of retail media. Should it sit with trade marketing teams focused on retailer relationships? With performance marketing teams managing lower-funnel conversion? With media planning teams allocating brand budgets? The answer varies by organization, but ambiguity creates execution delays. Forward-thinking brands are establishing retail media centers of excellence that bridge traditional silos, combining trade marketing’s retailer knowledge, performance marketing’s optimization expertise, and media planning’s strategic oversight. These cross-functional teams can negotiate retailer partnerships, manage platform relationships, optimize campaign performance, and integrate retail media into holistic marketing strategies rather than treating it as an isolated tactic.
The Competitive Landscape: Winners and Laggards in the Next Eighteen Months
Looking ahead through 2026, retail media’s trajectory in MENA appears set for continued acceleration. The economic fundamentals supporting growth remain strong: e-commerce penetration is rising across all major markets, digital advertising spend is growing faster than GDP, and retailers need new revenue streams to offset margin pressure from price competition and delivery costs. Retail media addresses all three dynamics simultaneously. For retailers, it transforms customer relationships into monetizable assets. For brands, it provides access to high-intent audiences with measurable performance. For the advertising ecosystem, it represents the fastest-growing channel segment at a time when traditional media faces structural headwinds.
The brands likely to benefit most are those that move decisively in the near term. Retail media networks are actively courting anchor advertisers, offering preferential rates and co-development opportunities to brands willing to commit significant budgets. These early partnerships shape platform feature development, creative formats, and measurement standards. An FMCG company that becomes a founding advertiser on a retail network gains influence over product roadmaps and pricing structures that later entrants cannot access. The risk of waiting is that competitive positions solidify. If a rival establishes exclusive category partnerships or secures premium placements through long-term contracts, catching up becomes more expensive. The brands that establish institutional knowledge early, build retailer relationships, develop retail-optimized creative libraries, and tune attribution models to incorporate retail media signals will operate from positions of structural advantage.
The operational questions marketing leaders should be asking internally center on strategic readiness rather than tactical execution. Does our organization understand which product categories and consumer segments are most likely to respond to retail media? Have we analyzed our current trade marketing and performance budgets to identify reallocation opportunities that don’t sacrifice existing ROI? Do we have relationships with the key retail media networks operating in our priority markets, and have we negotiated pricing and partnership terms that reflect our long-term intentions? Can our measurement infrastructure ingest retail media data alongside other channels to produce unified performance views? Do our creative teams have the brief templates, asset specifications, and approval workflows to produce retail-optimized content at the pace campaign optimization requires?
Organizations that can answer these questions affirmatively are positioned to scale retail media investment confidently. Those still working through organizational alignment, budget authority, and capability development face twelve to eighteen months of groundwork before they can execute at competitive intensity. The gap between these groups will widen through 2026 as retail media captures an increasing share of total digital spend. For MENA marketers, the opportunity is substantial but time-sensitive. Retail media networks are maturing rapidly, advertiser competition for premium inventory is intensifying, and the strategic advantages of early adoption are meaningful. The digital shelf has become prime advertising real estate, and the marketers who recognize this shift first will capture disproportionate returns while the channel economics remain favorable.