Retail media has moved from supermarket websites to the mall floor. In July 2026, UAE based Multiply Media Group entered Saudi Arabia in partnership with Cenomi Centers to launch BackLite KSA, a network of more than eighty digital screens across four flagship malls: Westfield Riyadh, Westfield Jeddah, U Walk Riyadh and U Walk Jeddah.1
For brands in the Gulf this opens a genuinely useful channel. It also creates a familiar trap. Mall media is bought centrally and measured in impressions, while the purchase it is meant to trigger happens metres away in a store that the media plan usually does not touch.
The Gap Between the Impression and the Purchase
A shopper sees a screen on the concourse. Ninety seconds later they are in front of the category. Everything that happens in those ninety seconds is store execution, and none of it is controlled by the media buy.
If the product is out of stock, if it sits in the wrong part of the fixture, if the promotional price on the screen is not the price on the shelf, or if no one on the floor can answer a question about it, the impression has been paid for and discarded. The media worked. The conversion did not.
What Usually Breaks Between Screen and Shelf
The failure points are consistent and mostly unglamorous. Campaign dates and store readiness are planned by different teams and rarely synchronised. Stock forecasts assume a normal week rather than an advertised one. Store staff are not briefed on a campaign that is running above their heads.
None of these are media problems, which is precisely why they survive campaign reviews. The post campaign report shows delivered impressions against plan. It does not show that the product was unavailable in a third of the stores in the catchment during the flight.
Pairing Media With Field Activation
Screens create attention at the mall level. Field activity converts it at the store level. The two work considerably better when they are planned as one operation with the same dates, the same priority stores and the same definition of success.
In practice this means aligning the campaign calendar with a store readiness check before the flight starts, briefing store teams on what shoppers are being shown, staffing demonstration or sampling activity in the highest traffic locations during the flight, and auditing availability and display while the campaign is live rather than after it.
What to Measure
Impressions tell you the media was delivered. They do not tell you whether the store could absorb the demand. A retail media plan in the Gulf is better judged on a small number of joint measures.
- On shelf availability in campaign catchment stores during the flight, not before it.
- Price and promotion consistency between the screen creative and the shelf.
- Display presence and correct location for the advertised range.
- Store team awareness of the live campaign.
- Category offtake in exposed stores against a comparable control group.
The last of those is the honest test, and it depends on execution discipline as much as on creative. Our guide to shopper behaviours that shape retail strategy covers the in store decision moment in more detail.
Where Channelplay Fits
Channelplay works on the store side of this equation across Saudi Arabia and the UAE. That typically means readiness audits in campaign stores before a flight begins, trained promoters in high traffic locations while it runs, and availability, pricing and display checks reported quickly enough to correct mid campaign.
For brands running national activity, this usually sits alongside visual merchandising and sales team outsourcing, with field reporting through our AI retail technology. To align a media flight with store readiness, speak with Channelplay.
Sources
- Multiply Media Group expands into Saudi Arabia with Cenomi Centers and launches BackLite KSA, Zawya via Reuters, 3 July 2026. View source
Photographs in this article were taken by the author in retail environments across the Gulf and are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any brand, product, retailer or store that appears is incidental to the photograph. Their appearance does not imply that Channelplay serves, represents, endorses or is affiliated with them.