The supply side has moved first
The Gulf's out-of-home market is being rebuilt through concessions, and the new concessions are digital.
In Dubai, Mada Media, the entity that organises and regulates the emirate's out-of-home sector, awarded roughly Dh1.5 billion in contracts across 683 advertising assets in the first half of 2026, with about 80 local and regional companies bidding (Khaleej Times, 28.09.2026). Citing a PwC study, Mada Media puts Dubai at around 73% of UAE out-of-home spending, and the UAE market at about Dh3.5 billion in gross spend in 2025. Its stated reading of the market: investment is moving into digital formats and the sector is shifting toward programmatic, because inventory is becoming more measurable, automated and data-driven.
In Riyadh, Al Arabia won the project from Remat Al-Riyadh, the development arm of Riyadh Municipality, to build, operate and maintain 1,325 outdoor billboards, with a stated digitisation rate of 100% and four digital zones of building-scale screens (Argaam, Tadawul filing). The same operator holds a 10-year concession for advertising across 18 airports under Cluster 2 Airports, and in January 2026 signed agreements to commercialise digital screens in eight Majid Al Futtaim malls in the UAE.
Retail networks are crossing borders too. In July 2026 Multiply Media Group launched BackLite KSA with Cenomi Centers, a network of more than 80 digital screens across Westfield Riyadh, Westfield Jeddah, U Walk Riyadh and U Walk Jeddah. In January 2026 Hypermedia began deploying a real-time programmatic ecosystem across its network of 4,000 digital screens in the UAE.
The direction is consistent: more screens, larger formats, longer concessions, and programmatic connections built in from the start. Every one of these screens will eventually be offered to a buyer as impressions on a CPM.
The demand side is ready to buy that way
VIOOH's State of the Nation 2026, the first edition to include the Middle East, surveyed advertisers and agencies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Programmatic DOOH featured in 34% of their campaigns over the previous 18 months, and they expect that to reach 46% over the next 18. They expect to raise programmatic DOOH investment by 42% on average.
How they buy is as important as how much. 88% plan programmatic DOOH as part of wider digital or programmatic activity, not as an out-of-home line. 51% of campaigns run at national scale. 72% prefer Programmatic Guaranteed, 52% Private Marketplace and 39% open auction, and 58% say they are likely to use curated marketplaces. 66% associate the channel with dynamic creative.
Read together, these numbers describe a buyer who wants guaranteed, curated, national inventory, planned in the same tools as display and video. That buyer will compare a DOOH impression with a digital impression. The comparison only holds if the DOOH impression is counted to a published standard.
The gap: a currency nobody has agreed
The supply and demand sides have not yet met on one point: the definition of the unit being sold.
A proposal for a Gulf network today can quote plays, loop capacity, footfall estimates from a mall operator, traffic counts from a road authority, or audience figures from a mobile panel. Each is a real number. None is interchangeable with the others, and a buyer cannot price them on the same CPM.
Regional media owners have said this openly. BackLite's James Bicknell has written that for programmatic out-of-home to flourish in the UAE, the market needs to define the currency and establish one data source as the benchmark (Campaign Middle East). Industry research on Saudi Arabia lists measurement and attribution complexity among the main restraints on the market.
The cost of the gap falls on both sides. Buyers discount what they cannot verify. Media owners who have invested in premium digital assets see those assets priced like unverified inventory. And budgets that VIOOH's respondents say would come from digital channels stay in digital channels.
What the United States is doing about the same problem
The US is addressing the same gap now, and the same platform sits at the centre of it.
On 24.09.2026 the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) launched its Programmatic & Automation Center of Excellence. Its Advisory Board is chaired by Ari Buchalter, Chief Strategy Officer at Broadsign, with AdQuick, Broadsign, Perion, VIOOH and Vistar Media as founding members. Its four workstreams are shared data structures that agency tools can read directly, workflow automation including AI agents, reporting and attribution frameworks, and integration with omnichannel and retail media systems. On 08.10.2026 a Technical Advisory Council of media-owner technology leaders, including Lamar, JCDecaux North America, OUTFRONT Media and Clear Channel Outdoor, was added to standardise inventory definitions, order flows between systems and delivery reporting.
The US is not writing a new currency. The Media Rating Council published its out-of-home measurement standard in December 2025, developed with Geopath, DPAA, OAAA, IAB, ESOMAR and WOO. The current work connects that standard to the systems that buy and sell. A GCC standard does not need to start from zero either: it can adopt the MRC framework and the US data structures, and adapt only what is genuinely local.
What a GCC measurement standard should contain
Red C proposes a measurement standard for programmatic DOOH in the GCC, built on the MRC out-of-home framework. The aim is for every report to state what was measured, what was estimated, and how.
One vocabulary for four numbers. Plays and proof of play show where, when and how often an ad ran. Impressions estimate the people in view during each play. Reach and frequency count unique people and average exposure. Impact is the change in behaviour, such as visit lift against a comparison group. A proposal quoting 100,000 weekly plays is quoting capacity, not audience. Plays and reach appear on separate lines in every proposal and report.
Five measurement layers. Location traffic around the screen, from a mobile location panel. Gross impressions while the ad actually plays, matched to proof-of-play logs. Opportunity to see, for people physically able to see the screen: 1 second for static, 2 seconds for video, full screen visible. Likelihood to see, calibrated for size, angle, distance, dwell and attention. Audience, as deduplicated people, on which reach and frequency depend. The layer a campaign will be reported on is written into the brief before launch.
A screen registry that matches the region's inventory. Each screen carries a unique ID, location, venue type, native resolution, ad slot, opening hours and loop policy. In the Gulf this matters more than usual: much of the new inventory sits in malls, airports and entertainment districts with operating hours that change by season, and in Ramadan by time of day. A screen registered as open 24 hours when it runs 18 misstates both availability and price.
Venue categories that are granular enough. A building-facade screen on a Riyadh arterial road, an elevator screen in a Dubai residential tower and a gate screen at a regional airport are not the same audience. Venue taxonomy should follow the international categories buyers already use, so GCC inventory appears correctly in global DSPs.
Disclosure rules. A figure outside the standard is labelled "estimated", not "measured". Panel size, representativeness and weighting are disclosed in every report. Proof-of-play logs are retained and open to audit; the MRC standard asks for 12 months. Under Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law and the UAE's data protection framework, location data in measurement is used in aggregated, consented form, and the report says so.
Creative that fits the screen. The ad area is the screen's native resolution, the aspect ratio is exact, and video length matches the slot. Dynamic creative, which two-thirds of regional marketers associate with the channel, changes the context, product or offer, not only the background. Bilingual Arabic and English creative is specified per screen group, so the message can be read in the 5 to 8 seconds available.
Loop maths in the open. A 180-second loop with 15-second slots has 12 slots. One play per loop across 24 hours is 480 plays a day; a 17-screen network has a weekly capacity of 57,120 plays. These are not people. CPM prices people, so the conversion from plays to impressions is shown, not assumed.
Measurement has to reach the outcome
A channel bought on CPM keeps its budget when it shows a result beyond the impression. In out-of-home, that result is most often a visit.
Published cases show how it is done elsewhere. In the US, a quick-service restaurant launch used proximity targeting around malls, gyms, petrol stations and competitor locations; Vistar Media reported more than 49 million impressions, more than 1.3 million store visits and an 8.8% visit lift in the exposed group. In the UK, JCDecaux UK and Tesco's SmartScreen network connected Dunnhumby sales data to Broadsign so till data set campaign frequency. These results are specific to their campaigns. What transfers is the method: a measurement plan written before launch, an exposed group read against a comparison group, and a defined attribution window.
For the Gulf, where mall and destination traffic carries a large share of out-of-home value, visit measurement is the natural first outcome layer.
The infrastructure already in place
Broadsign manages more than 2 million screens across 107 countries (Broadsign, June 2026), and its software has been used by UAE media owners for over a decade. The platform links the screen management system that runs loops and produces proof of play, an SSP connected to more than 40 DSPs, and the OutMoove DSP on the buy side. Agencies can also reach the inventory through DV360, The Trade Desk, Hivestack and Adform.
With Azira's location data, the workflow runs in five steps: define the audience, map where it concentrates, match nearby screens by radius and venue type, trigger by score, time and weather, and measure visit lift between exposed and unexposed groups.
Because Broadsign chairs the OAAA's programmatic Advisory Board, a GCC standard built on this stack moves in the same direction as the US work. International buyers planning across markets will recognise the definitions.
Before the next GCC campaign
- Are plays and reach reported on separate lines?
- Is the reported measurement layer written into the brief?
- Does the screen registry reflect real opening hours, including seasonal and Ramadan schedules?
- Are unsold slots covered by filler, so loops do not over-deliver and inflate reports?
- Is creative produced per screen group, in both languages where required, with video matched to slot length?
- Is the measurement plan defined: comparison group, attribution window, panel disclosure?
- Is there one owner for programmatic DOOH inside the agency?
Conclusion
The Gulf is investing in digital out-of-home at concession scale, and its marketers already plan the channel alongside digital. The missing piece is a shared definition of the impression. The framework exists and the US is connecting it to its buying systems now. Applying it in the GCC from the first programmatic campaign costs less than retrofitting it after the market has priced itself on unverified numbers.
Sources
- Khaleej Times, 28.09.2026; Argaam and TradeArabia (Al Arabia filings and contracts)
- Business Wire (BackLite KSA, 07.07.2026); Creative Brands (Hypermedia, January 2026)
- VIOOH, State of the Nation 2026, Middle East; Campaign Middle East (James Bicknell)
- OAAA: Center of Excellence (24.09.2026), Technical Advisory Council (08.10.2026)
- Media Rating Council, OOH Measurement Standards, December 2025
- Broadsign platform presentation, June 2026; Vistar Media case guides