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IAB MENA puts the region's 2025 digital ad spend at $8.185bn, up 17.8%.

IAB MENA sizes the region's digital ad market at $8.185bn for 2025, up 17.8%, with retail media and connected TV among the fastest-growing channels.

By IAB MENA · Jun 8, 2026

IAB MENA puts the region's 2025 digital ad spend at $8.185bn, up 17.8%

Digital advertising in the Middle East and North Africa was worth $8.185bn in 2025, 17.8% more than in 2024, according to IAB MENA's annual digital adspend study. IAB MENA, the industry body for digital advertising in the region, presented the results at a members' event on 8 June 2026 and published a summary the same day.

The full report is for members only. The public summary gives the total, growth rates for four channels and one country, and says this is the first edition with separate estimates for connected TV (CTV), retail media and programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH). Campaign Middle East and Communicate reported the figures on 9 June.

Key numbers

  • $8.185bn

    MENA digital advertising spend in 2025

  • 17.8%

    year-on-year growth

  • 23.1%

    growth in Egypt, the fastest of any market in the region

  • 31%

    growth in connected TV advertising

  • 40.5%

    the upper end of IAB MENA's estimate for retail media growth

Key findings

IAB MENA says MENA was the fastest-growing digital advertising region in the world in 2025, and that it kept its place among the five biggest markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa by ad spend. Egypt grew fastest within the region, at 23.1%.

The region is still, in IAB MENA's words, "social first". For individual channels the summary gives growth rates only:

  • Social advertising: up 19.3%
  • Social video: up 23.6%
  • Connected TV: up 31%, well ahead of the market as a whole
  • Retail media: up by as much as 40.5%, which IAB MENA counts among the fastest-growing channels

Elie Milan, Vice Chair of the IAB MENA Board and Chief Performance Officer of Publicis Media, said newer channels such as retail media, pDOOH and CTV were "beginning to scale".

Growth was a little slower than a year earlier. IAB MENA's previous study put 2024 spend at $6.95bn, up 19.8%, with Saudi Arabia growing faster than the region at 23.5%.

How the study works

The 2025 summary does not set out the method, but IAB MENA's notes on earlier editions do. The study measures money that reaches the sell side, meaning publishers, SSPs and platforms, for advertising delivered to audiences in MENA. The figures come from an econometric model that is checked against actual spend data, collaborative estimates and comparative benchmarks. For the 2023 edition, 25 companies took part in one-to-one validation interviews, and IAB MENA says it ran more validation sessions for the 2024 edition, in one-to-one meetings and roundtable workshops. For 2025, Ian Manning, Executive Director of IAB MENA, pointed to growing support from members and non-members and to "enhanced econometric modelling", and called it the most detailed report to date.

The summary does not say how many companies contributed this year or which markets the study covers. IAB MENA estimates "export" spend separately, in a buy-side study, and says those figures should not be added to or compared with this total.

What the public numbers leave out

This is a MENA total, not a GCC one, and the summary gives no figure for the Gulf or for Saudi Arabia. The latest GCC share in IAB's public summaries comes from the 2021 edition, which put the GCC at 86% of MENA digital spend and the UAE and Saudi Arabia at an estimated 72.4% between them. That figure is now five years old.

The channel figures are growth rates without dollar values, so they show momentum, not size. A 31% rise in CTV, or one of up to 40.5% in retail media, does not tell a planner how much of the $8.185bn either channel takes.

What it means for marketers

Social, social video and CTV all grew faster than the market, which shows where regional budgets are moving. But the public figures cannot size a GCC budget or show any channel's share of spend; those breakdowns are in the members-only report. Brands planning in Saudi Arabia or the wider Gulf should treat the $8.185bn as regional context rather than a market size for their own plans, and ask partners who are IAB MENA members what the full report says about their markets and channels.

Sources

Source: IAB MENA

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