The $3 Billion Back-to-School Rush: Your Brand’s Big Moment
Back-to-school season in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) isn’t just a time for new backpacks and pencil cases—it’s a $3 billion retail opportunity that brands can’t afford to miss. Yet, most marketing campaigns fail to reach the right shoppers at the right time, resulting in wasted budgets and missed sales opportunities due to a lack of audience precision and local relevance.
Imagine being able to show your ads directly to parents who are actively shopping for school supplies. Or target families based on their exact location, whether they’re browsing in malls, researching online from home, or even parents dropping off their kids at school?
With MEmob+’s geotargeting tools—AllPings for pinpoint location data and Excelate for smart ad delivery—you can.
With nearly 78% of BTS shopping occurring in the last three weeks before school, precise targeting is crucial to avoid wasted ad spend and capture high-intent shoppers.
Let’s dive into how you can make this BTS season your brand’s best yet.
2025 UAE BTS Trends:
The back-to-school season in the UAE is evolving into a high-stakes, data-driven marketing opportunity. In 2025, BTS spending is projected to exceed AED 3 billion (~USD 820M), with parents allocating over AED 2,000 per child. Here’s the scoop:
- Retail on the rise: Q1 2025 UAE retail spending rose 13% YoY, and e-commerce captured 15–16% of total value (LinkedIn).
- Education investment: The UAE’s federal budget allocates a significant share to education, totaling AED 71.5 billion, representing an 11.6% increase from 2024 (mof.gov.ae).
- EdTech is booming: The UAE’s education market is set to grow to USD 5.1B (2025–2029) at 8.6% CAGR; global EdTech market projected at 15.9% CAGR (Technavio).
Combine this with low inflation (~2.3%) and a hybrid shopping shift, and it’s clear: People are ready to spend—but only if you meet them where they are.
Take a look at the shopping trend for these users during this year’s Back-to-School season:
MEmob+ Solutions: Your BTS Powerhouse
MEmob+ combines AllPings’ location intelligence with Excelate’s programmatic ad delivery to create high-impact BTS campaigns. Here’s how:
- Location-Driven Demand Creation: AllPings’ privacy-compliant mobility data targets high-intent shoppers in key areas, such as malls, schools, and family-dense neighborhoods. By geofencing these areas, brands can drive foot traffic and maximize ROI with hyper-local campaigns.
- Category-Level Retail Intelligence: AllPings delivers SKU-level insights for BTS categories like uniforms, electronics, and snacks. Map high-demand zones, forecast ROI, and optimize inventory to focus on top-performing products.
- Cross-Category Campaign Optimization: AllPings and Excelate DSP sync campaigns across multiple BTS segments (e.g., uniforms and backpacks), utilizing data insights to allocate budgets to high-performing categories, thereby maximizing overall return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Hyper-Personalized Programmatic Ads: Excelate DV+ delivers AI-powered, fraud-free ads across mobile and video. Tailor creatives to user behavior and location—target millennial moms at night or Gen Z dads during breaks for higher engagement.
- Full-Funnel Attribution: With Stretch, track every step from ad click to in-store purchase. Identify which ads drive sales of specific products, ensuring measurable ROI and clear campaign impact..
Let’s Get Tactical: How to Reach High-Intent Audiences
Let’s get specific about how MEmob’s geotargeting can help GCC brands capture those critical high-intent audiences.
1.Knowing Where Your Shoppers Are with AllPings
Geotargeting starts with knowing where your ideal customers are located. For GCC brands, this means gaining in-depth insights into which areas or locations have the highest concentration of potential customers. This isn’t just about broad regions but pinpointing exactly where your target audience lives, works, and shops.
AllPings provides an aerial view of your customers’ locations. With mobility patterns and footfall data across KSA, UAE, Qatar, and more, brands can pinpoint:
- High traffic malls, supermarket zones
- School clusters with frequent parent visits
- Residential communities with family density
- Competitor store foot traffic patterns
Leveraging AllPings’ Isoline Maps/ Isochrone feature, you can visualize travel-time-based catchments (e.g., 5-minute drive zones) around schools and malls to target families where they live and shop. These maps reduce ad waste by focusing on high-intent zones, boosting conversions.
Action Step:
- Use AllPings’ dashboard to review customer mobility and visitation patterns, and build audience cards with the Isoline tool, targeting a 5 km radius around key locations.
- Prepare these audiences for activation on Excelate or social platforms.
2.Geofence High-Intent Locations
High-intent areas are locations where people are more likely to be interested in your back-to-school products. With AllPings, you can pay special attention to the audience’s mobility timing patterns. The platform allows you to create custom geofences with 4.77m x 4.77m accuracy to trigger ads when potential customers enter specific zones:
- School zones: Establish perimeters around schools where parents frequently visit during drop-off and pick-up times.
- Residential areas: Target neighborhoods with high concentrations of families with school-aged children
- Shopping centers: Focus on malls and commercial districts where back-to-school shopping peaks
- Competitor locations: Target shoppers near rival stores to capture market share.
Action Step:
- Identify high-intent locations using AllPings’ in-depth mobility insights on audience segments based on real-world behavior.
- Generate heat maps showing which geographical areas have the highest foot traffic and proximity, and strategize your campaigns to achieve higher click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI.
- Activate location-based audience segments on Excelate or social platforms, such as Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat, to reach them where they’re most active.
3.Leveraging Proximity Targeting
Proximity targeting is a more precise form of geotargeting that focuses on specific points of interest. For back-to-school campaigns, this technique is extremely effective when used for:
- Mall targeting: Set up a 500-meter radius around popular shopping malls in each GCC country
- School proximity: Create targeting zones around schools, adjusting for different age groups
- Transportation hubs: Target areas where families commute to and from educational institutions
Action Step:
- Use AllPings’ “Points of Interest” feature to upload store POIs and analyze which store had the highest engagement and conversion rates.
- Adjust targeting parameters by time of day (e.g., morning drop-offs vs. afternoon pickups) to capture different audiences.
4.Segment and Personalize with Behavioural Targeting
Effective back-to-school campaigns require precise audience segmentation. Instead of assuming the behavioral patterns of all parents and students as a single group, break them down into specific segments based on the following:
Each segment will have different needs and priorities. With AllPings, you can create detailed buyer personas for each segment. These include:
This information forms the foundation for targeted messaging that addresses each segment’s specific needs directly.
Action Step:
- Build precise audience segments like “high school parents near Mall X who viewed backpacks” or “college students near Campus Y who abandoned carts.”
- Use these for retargeting to improve campaign performance.
5.Creating Location-Based Audience Segments
Use your engagement data to build more precise audience segments. AllPings enables you to group users based on their behaviors and locations, creating high-value segments for targeted advertising and retargeting.
For example:
- “High school parents within 5 miles of Mall X who viewed backpacks”
- “College students near Campus Y who abandoned shopping carts”
- “Parents in District Z who previously purchased school supplies”
These refined segments serve as the foundation for your next campaign iterations, enabling you to continually improve results.
6.Reach the Next Gen: Kids Who Influence Purchase Decisions
Today’s BTS buying journey is co-driven by children, especially tweens and teens. MEmob+ helps brands reach young audiences through:
- In-game ads on popular mobile titlesv
- Gamified ad formats on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok
- Fun, interactive creatives that resonate with younger users
AllPings helps map student movement patterns (e.g., near schools, tuition centers, and gaming cafes). At the same time, Excelate delivers the message in real-time, targeting both the kids and the parents simultaneously for maximum influence.
7.Activate Audiences and Launch Campaigns on Socials & Display
AllPings is integrated with META, TikTok, Snapchat, and Excelate. This integration enables you to combine the unmatched precision of AllPings’ location-based audiences with the massive reach and creative power of social and display platforms, taking your advertising to the next level where every impression matters.
- Precise Audience Activation: Target users based on real-world behaviors and visitation patterns.
- Seamless Syncing: Activate AllPings audiences to social platforms for data-driven campaigns.
- Maximized Engagement: Leverage granular data to enhance ad performance, campaign effectiveness, and drive higher ROI.
Whether you sell school supplies, electronics, clothing, or services, MEmob+’s geotargeting strategies will help you:
- Cut wasted ad spend with hyper-local targeting.
- Boost conversion rates through personalized, timely campaigns.
- Build stronger regional brand loyalty by meeting customers where they are.
- Outperform competitors who rely on outdated marketing methods
Remember: in a crowded marketplace, being in the right place at the right time isn’t luck; it’s a strategic move. With MEmob’s geotargeting capabilities, your brand can maximize every marketing dollar.
FAQ:
What is geotargeting for back-to-school campaigns?
Geotargeting utilizes real-world location data to deliver ads to high-intent audiences (e.g., parents shopping at malls and students near schools), thereby maximizing relevance and ROI.
How can brands in the GCC use geotargeting effectively?
Using AllPings, brands can target users based on their mobility patterns, build custom geofences, and activate these segments across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and Excelate DSP.
What are the top UAE back-to-school shopping trends for 2025?
Parents are spending over AED 2,000 per child, with 15–16% of spending online and heavy demand for uniforms, electronics, and snacks.
Is this platform compliant with data privacy regulations?
Yes. MEmob+, AllPings, and Excelate operate with full GDPR, CCPA, and GCC compliance.
