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:
The GCC’s Triple Threat: Why Regional Challenges Amplify the Risk
Unlike Europe or the U.S., the GCC faces a uniquely complex ad tech environment:
- Cultural Sensitivities
What might be an innocuous placement in New York could be reputationally damaging in Riyadh or Doha. Inappropriate adjacency to political or religious content can spark public backlash.
- Regulatory Surge
New data protection laws, such as the UAE’s PDPL and Saudi Arabia’s equivalent, require explicit consent, first-party data governance, and full transparency, much like the GDPR. Non-compliance can result in fines and public exposure.
- Fragmented Quality Control
Many Arabic SSPs and exchanges are not integrated with global verification partners. This leaves local inventory unchecked, unaudited, and risky.
As the region becomes increasingly digital-first, the margin for error is shrinking. Leading brands, particularly in finance, automotive, retail, and telco, now recognize that protecting media integrity is not just about risk mitigation. It’s about driving performance.
Integrity Is the New Performance
Traditionally, marketers were forced to choose:
- Performance marketing: ROAS, clicks, conversions
- Brand safety: Controlled placements, reduced risk
But today, this is a false choice.
A clean, fraud-free, and context-aware campaign doesn’t just protect brand equity—it performs better. According to DoubleVerify, campaigns with high-quality impressions (i.e., viewable, fraud-free, and brand-safe) generate a +67% higher conversion rate and a +72% uplift in purchase intent.
For GCC marketers, this is a massive opportunity. With the right stack, you can protect your brand, comply with local laws, and outperform competitors, all at once.
Excelate+ DV: The Integrity Stack for Smart GCC Advertisers
What happens when you combine the global authority in media verification (DoubleVerify) with a regionally built, culturally intelligent DSP (Excelate)?
You unlock a new standard for programmatic advertising in the Gulf: one that’s clean, compliant, and conversion-focused.
DoubleVerify: Global Trust in Every Impression
DoubleVerify is the verification backbone behind many of the world’s largest advertisers, including Unilever, P&G, Coca-Cola, and more. DV protects media investments with:
- Pre-bid verification: Blocks fraudulent or MFA sites before you bid
- Post-bid analytics: Confirms whether your ad was seen by a human in a safe environment
- Semantic AI targeting: Ensures brand-suitable placements across 100+ languages—including Arabic
- CTV & in-app viewability: Tracks quality across mobile-first, video-heavy channels
Now fully integrated with Excelate, DV’s tools are embedded directly into your media workflow—no added platforms, contracts, or friction.
Excelate: MENA’s First DSP Built for Integrity at Scale
Developed by MEmob+, Excelate is more than a media buying platform—it’s a full-stack engine for intelligent targeting, ethical data use, and regional performance.
What makes it unique?
Cultural segmentation: Uses Arabic-language apps, mobility behavior, and content signals to build relevant audience segments
Location & footfall intelligence: Via AllPings, you can retarget real-world store visitors or conquest competitor locations
Built-in consent infrastructure: Compliant with UAE & Saudi PDPLs, including user-level consent records and opt-in validation
Creative intelligence: Delivers optimized formats (video, DCO, rich media) across CTV, mobile, and desktop
Together, Excelate and DV offer end-to-end protection and performance—fully tuned for the GCC.
Combatting Ad Fraud in the GCC: Why It Starts with Verification
Ad fraud is no longer a technical detail; it’s a direct threat to ROAS. With billions of dirhams flowing through GCC programmatic ecosystems, bad actors have more incentive than ever to exploit blind spots.
The region faces fraud in multiple forms:
Fraud Type
What It Is
Why It Hurts GCC Brands
IVT (Invalid Traffic)
Non-human traffic from bots or data centers
Eats the budget and distorts optimization models
Click Farms
Paid users faking engagement
Common in the Arabic inventory with low scrutiny
Domain Spoofing
Fraudsters impersonate premium sites
You think you’re buying Al Arabiya, you’re not
App Spoofing
Fake or mislabeled apps collect impressions
Significant risk in mobile-first Saudi & UAE markets
MFA Sites
Pages designed only to monetize ads, not real users
Drains budget with no impact, often powered by AI-generated content
How Excelate + DV Shut Fraud Down
This partnership protects your budget on two fronts:
- Pre-Bid Fraud Filtering
- DV’s AI-powered verification screens every impression before it’s bought.
- Excelate’s DSP is integrated to act on those filters in real time, rejecting shady supply paths, bot-heavy domains, and resold inventory.
Post-Bid Transparency
See exactly:
- Which impressions were viewable and human
- Which exchanges underperformed or delivered fraud
- Where budget was wasted—and how to fix it
A recent Excelate case study in the UAE saw:
- 92% of fraudulent impressions blocked pre-bid
- 28% increase in verified reach
- 35% improvement in ROAS in just one month
Closing the Gap Between Trust and Results
Ad fraud doesn’t just waste money; it poisons your data, degrades your brand, and erodes trust with customers.
With Excelate + DV, you’re not flying blind.
You’re:
- Buying clean impressions
- Reaching real, high-intent audiences
- Staying compliant with GCC privacy laws
- And protecting every dirham you spend
In a region where growth is fast, but scrutiny is growing even faster—integrity is your competitive advantage.
Ready to Clean Up Your Campaigns?
Book a free Excelate demo and find out:
How much of your budget is exposed to fraud
Which impressions are really driving ROI
And how to fix your media with trust-first technology
Because performance means nothing without integrity.
