IAB Europe retail media study adds MENA: buyers want proof beyond ROAS.

IAB Europe has published the third edition of its Attitudes to Retail Media study, and for the first time it includes a meaningful sample from the Middle East and North Africa. IAB MENA joined the research this year and shared the findings on 3 November.

The headline is that retail media has moved past testing but not yet grown up. Buyers are committing to longer partnerships with retailers, while measurement, data and standards are holding back further spending. The MENA results are based on very small samples, and the report itself labels them as early signals rather than findings.

Key findings

The year-on-year comparisons use European respondents only, because the 2024 and 2025 waves were mainly European.

• 71% of European buyers have partnered with retailers for more than a year, up from 51% in 2024, a statistically significant rise. Across all buyers including MENA, the figure is 70%.
• On a five-point maturity scale, buyers place themselves at 3.2 on average, and just 12% reach the top level, "Sophisticated". The largest group, 43%, place themselves at level three, "Established".
• Lack of measurement and reporting narrowly leads a closely bunched group of barriers, named by 61% of European buyers; its 13-point rise on 2025 is not statistically significant. Concern about the data available rose from 31% to 58%.
• Return on ad spend has fallen from first to outside the top four metrics buyers want. It was picked by 49% of European buyers, down from 89% in 2025, behind unified online and offline reporting (66%), new-to-brand or new-to-category measures (63%) and incrementality (57%).
• Multi-touch attribution is wanted by 58% of buyers and offered by 31% of sellers. 63% of sellers plan to improve their measurement in the next 12 months, their most-cited priority.
• Retailer first-party data remains the main attraction for 81% of European buyers, while reach at the point of sale fell significantly to 62%.
• 68% of sellers plan to build AI-powered campaign management and optimisation in the next year, and half plan to work on product visibility inside AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.

The MENA comparison comes with a warning. The report calls that section hypotheses, not findings: most MENA question bases sit between 9 and 20 people, and none of the Europe-versus-MENA differences is significance-tested. With that caveat, MENA buyers look more bullish and more data- and AI-minded than Europeans:

• 80% of MENA buyers increased their retail media investment, against 71% in Europe.
• 67% were more satisfied with results, against 45%.
• 91% saw retailer first-party data as an opportunity, against 81%.
• 73% named lack of measurement as a barrier, against 61%.
• 40% put agentic or conversational AI at the top of their AI focus, against 33%.

The report adds an important qualifier. The MENA respondents skew towards larger, more digital buyers with regional remits: 61% hold a regional brief against 36% of Europeans, and 39% of MENA buyers personally manage budgets in the 11m to 50m band (euros for Europe, dollars for MENA) against 9% in Europe. That profile, it says, is likely part of the reason for the gap, and a larger MENA sample in 2027 would be needed to separate the two.

How the research was done

The study is an online survey sent to IAB Europe members and the wider industry through national IABs and federations. Of 303 raw responses, 150 remained after cleaning: 91 from the buy side (advertisers and agencies) and 59 from the sell side (retailers, media owners and retail media networks). The analytical bases are 110 for Europe and 37 for MENA, and the two overlap, since 11 European respondents also cover MENA. Caras Consulting did the quantitative analysis. Ascentinel ran separate qualitative interviews with 18 people, 11 buyers and 7 sellers, sponsored by LuckyCart and Mirakl Ads. The report does not give the fieldwork dates.

What it means for marketers

For Gulf brands, the useful finding is not that MENA looks more upbeat, since the sample is too small to prove it. It is that MENA buyers also cite lack of measurement (73%, on a small base). Our read: like European buyers, they will want proof of incremental sales, new customers and joined-up online and offline reporting, not just ROAS figures reported by the retailer. Brands negotiating with Gulf networks such as those run by grocery and delivery groups can use the gap between what buyers want and what sellers offer as a checklist, and ask which network will adopt IAB Europe's measurement standards or its certification.

About this report

Published by IAB Europe, with IAB MENA, November 2026. Free. Get the full report from IAB Europe

Sources

• IAB Europe, "Attitudes to Retail Media 2026: Europe and MENA" (November 2026)
• IAB MENA, "Attitudes to Retail Media 2026" (3 November 2026)