Retail Media Networks and Digital In-Store Advertising in the GCC (2026)

Global retail media spend is on track to reach roughly USD 165 billion in 2026, up from about USD 140 billion in 2024, and Amazon Ads alone controls around 80% market share worth USD 88.6 billion in annual revenue. Yet 49% of retail media platforms still struggle to accurately measure ad-to-store conversion, the exact gap that GCC retailers like ADNOC Distribution are now racing to close with first-party data built from millions of loyalty members. Retail media has become the fastest-growing pocket of digital advertising anywhere in the world, and the GCC is building its own version of it in real time.

This is the playbook for retail media networks and digital in-store advertising in the GCC: why retail media is exploding, the region’s own networks, in-store digital advertising, retailer-owned versus marketplace models, the measurement challenge, and how a brand should budget for it.

Spoke three of Retail Marketing and Sales in the GCC. It is the paid-media layer sitting on top of the omnichannel foundation covered in spoke two.

1. Why Retail Media Is Exploding

Retail media is advertising sold on a retailer’s own digital and physical properties, its site, app and in-store screens, using that retailer’s first-party shopper data to target ads and measure them against real purchases, not estimated ones. The category has grown from roughly USD 140 billion globally in 2024 to a projected USD 165 billion in 2026, and by one measure retail media networks captured USD 128 billion in 2026 advertiser spend specifically because they deliver closed-loop attribution, first-party data targeting and ads served at the actual point of purchase, three advantages that cookie-dependent open-web advertising increasingly cannot match.

The concentration at the top is extreme, Amazon Ads dominates with around 80% global market share and roughly USD 88.6 billion in annual revenue, built on owning the entire loop: the search query, the product listing, the click and the purchase. Walmart Connect ranks a distant second but is the strongest omnichannel play, reaching an estimated 90% of US households across web, app, in-store TV walls, self-checkout screens and in-store radio. What makes this relevant far beyond the US is the underlying mechanism, retailers are converting owned digital and physical properties into advertising inventory that monetises first-party data, and that mechanism is now spreading to every retail market with enough scale and data maturity, the GCC included. Around 62% of global retailers have already stood up in-house media networks to capitalise on this shift, and roughly 46% of retail media investment now flows through automated, programmatic platforms rather than manually negotiated placements.

Retail media works because it answers a question open-web advertising cannot: did this ad actually sell the product. Every retailer sitting on real purchase data is now positioned to become a media company, and the GCC’s largest retailers are moving on exactly that opportunity.

2. The GCC’s Own Networks

The region already has real, operating retail media networks, not just intent to build them. Majid Al Futtaim has deployed Advertima’s Audience AI across Carrefour’s UAE hypermarkets through its Precision Media unit, bringing digital media planning, activation and measurement directly into physical stores, explicitly framed by the company as shaping the future of retail media in the region. ADNOC Distribution has gone further, launching Engage, the UAE’s first full-funnel retail media network operated by a mobility and convenience retailer, combining digital channels, in-station screens, customer insights and first-party data from more than 2.7 million ADNOC Rewards members, with nearly 700,000 daily service-station customers and over 250 million annual transactions feeding the platform. ADNOC frames the opportunity as reaching consumers at multiple moments across their daily journeys, from sofa to station, and its own marketing leadership has been explicit about why this matters, the constant pressure to answer a CFO’s question about precisely how much return a marketing budget generated.

Beyond these purpose-built networks, the region’s ecommerce marketplaces already function as de facto retail media platforms. Noon, co-founded with Public Investment Fund anchor capital and built on first-party logistics through Noon Express plus embedded fintech via Tabby integration, and Amazon.sa, leveraging Amazon’s global FBA and Prime infrastructure, together control the majority of Saudi Arabia’s multicategory marketplace segment, and in the UAE, Noon and Amazon effectively require brands to buy paid visibility inside the marketplace itself, not just around it, exactly as the ecommerce-heavy elsewhere in this cluster covers. Meanwhile Jarir and Extra, Saudi Arabia’s dominant electronics retailers, have layered competitive online channels onto deep physical store networks, a genuinely omnichannel model that positions them to build their own retail media inventory as the market matures further.

3. In-Store Digital Advertising

The most visible evolution in retail media is happening inside the physical store itself, where static posters are giving way to interactive, AI-driven screens that sense shopper behaviour and respond immediately. Central to this shift is AI processing large volumes of real-time store signals, foot traffic, dwell time, purchase history, to display the right ad to the right customer at the right moment, transforming shelves and entryways into genuine media placements rather than passive signage. A typical modern in-store campaign might use entrance displays to introduce a new product, interactive screens in the relevant aisle to surface flavour or specification details, and point-of-sale screens to deliver a digital coupon at checkout, turning a single shopping trip into a guided, multi-touch brand experience.

The economics are becoming genuinely measurable rather than purely intuitive. In-store screens, kiosks and point-of-purchase displays typically sell on a CPM basis in the USD 10 to 30 range, and lift studies increasingly show a real 5 to 15% sales lift in stores exposed to the campaign compared to unexposed control stores, evidence that finally proves what retailers long suspected, that online ads raise awareness but the purchase decision itself is still frequently made in-store. Newer, higher-production formats like shoppable video and connected-TV-style placements command higher CPMs, typically USD 20 to 50, but deliver completion rates of 70 to 85% and ROAS between 2.0x and 4.5x when combined with on-site retargeting. For a GCC brand, this means the store is no longer just a distribution point, it is an advertising channel in its own right, and the region’s largest hypermarket chains are exactly the kind of high-footfall, high-frequency environment where this format performs best.

4. Retailer-Owned vs Marketplace vs Commerce Media

Not all retail media inventory works the same way, and understanding the structure helps a brand choose where to spend. Retailer-owned networks, where the retailer sells its own site, app and in-store inventory directly, account for the largest share of the global market at roughly 67.5%, and most major networks now offer self-serve campaign management, letting brands set budgets, choose targeting and monitor performance in real time, which has opened the channel to mid-market brands alongside the large CPG advertisers who were early movers. Larger, more complex campaigns, particularly offsite programmatic or custom audience builds, still typically run through managed-service teams or private marketplace deals that secure premium inventory at agreed pricing while retaining targeting flexibility.

A newer and increasingly important distinction is commerce media, the broader superset of retail media that extends the same first-party commerce data off the retailer’s owned properties into the open web, connected TV, social and other commerce-adjacent environments the retailer does not own outright. This matters for the GCC specifically because it means a retailer like Noon or a network like ADNOC Engage does not have to confine its value to its own app and screens, first-party purchase and loyalty data can, in principle, follow the shopper onto social and streaming platforms too, extending the reach of a retail media buy well beyond the retailer’s own digital footprint. As GCC retail media matures, expect the region’s networks to move from purely onsite placements toward this broader commerce media model, following the same trajectory global leaders like Amazon and Walmart have already taken.

5. The Measurement Challenge

For all its promise, retail media has a real, persistent weakness, and honest strategy has to account for it. Roughly 49% of retail media platforms still struggle to accurately measure ad-to-store conversion, the single hardest attribution problem in the category, because connecting a digital or in-store ad impression to an actual completed purchase requires clean, unified data across systems that, as the omnichannel playbook in this cluster covered, many retailers have not yet fully integrated. This is precisely the tension ADNOC’s own marketing leadership named directly, the constant pressure to prove to a CFO exactly what return a marketing dollar generated, a pressure that retail media is supposed to solve but does not automatically deliver without disciplined measurement infrastructure behind it.

Foot traffic and loyalty data are increasingly closing this attribution gap. Target reports that 76% of its shoppers use its website or app while physically in-store, an omnichannel behaviour that creates natural attribution bridges between digital exposure and physical purchase, and the same principle underpins ADNOC Engage’s approach, using loyalty-member data across 2.7 million-plus accounts to connect exposure to actual fuel and retail transactions rather than relying on vague reach and engagement metrics. For a brand evaluating any GCC retail media opportunity, the right question is not simply how much reach a network offers, but specifically how it proves an ad led to a sale, and any network that cannot answer that clearly should be treated as a lower-confidence, test-budget placement rather than a core spend line.

6. How a Brand Should Budget for It

Given the scale of the opportunity and the genuine measurement gaps, a disciplined GCC brand should treat retail media as a distinct budget line, not an afterthought folded into general digital spend. Start with the networks that already have proven, first-party-data-backed measurement, Majid Al Futtaim’s Carrefour Precision Media and ADNOC Engage are the clearest examples in the region today, and treat Noon and Amazon.sa sponsored placements as close to mandatory for any brand selling through those marketplaces, since visibility inside the platform increasingly substitutes for organic discovery the way SEO does on the open web.

From there, allocate a smaller test budget to newer or less-proven in-store and screen-based formats, using the CPM ranges and lift-study benchmarks in this playbook as a sense check on whether a given network’s pricing and reported performance are credible, and insist on lift-study or foot-traffic-based measurement rather than accepting impression counts alone as proof of value. Finally, plan for consolidation and complexity, enterprise brands managing five or more retail media networks simultaneously already report real operational and analytics strain globally, so a GCC brand entering this space early should build its measurement and reporting discipline now, before the number of regional networks worth buying grows from a handful to a dozen. Retail media in the GCC is still early relative to the US and Europe, which is exactly why the brands that build proper measurement discipline today will have a lasting advantage once the category matures and competition for the same first-party-data-backed inventory intensifies.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Retail media is the fastest-growing pocket of digital advertising in the world, and the GCC is building its own version of it right now, from Majid Al Futtaim’s Carrefour Precision Media to ADNOC’s Engage network to the de facto retail media role of Noon and Amazon.sa. In-store digital advertising is delivering real, measurable sales lift, and the category is splitting into retailer-owned, marketplace and the emerging commerce media model. But nearly half of all retail media platforms still cannot cleanly prove ad-to-store impact, so the discipline that separates a strong GCC retail media strategy from a wasted budget line is insisting on real, purchase-linked measurement, starting with the networks that already have it, and building the reporting muscle now while the region’s retail media landscape is still forming.

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