Growing Smarter in MENA: Shy Rahimi on the Region’s Unique Mobile Landscape

The mobile marketing landscape in MENA is evolving rapidly, and few are better positioned to offer insights than Shy Rahimi, MENA Managing Director at Bidease. In a recent conversation, Shy broke down the shifting attitudes among advertisers, the nuances of privacy and fraud in the region, and the increasingly creative ways brands are retaining users.

Whether you're looking to scale responsibly, drive higher LTV, or tap into the long tail of mobile apps, his insights are a roadmap to smarter growth.

Watch the full interview below, or read on for a selection of key takeaways.

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Key Takeaways

1. Shift your KPIs beyond CPA and CPI to focus on long-term value like cohorted LTV and audience quality. When marketers optimize only for upfront costs, they risk missing out on high-value users who cost more but deliver better returns over time.
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2. Invest in AI-powered fraud detection and education to safeguard performance and scale confidently. Fraud not only drains budgets but also corrupts data models, making it harder to optimize for growth across all campaigns.
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3. Localize creatives by dialect, color psychology, and cultural nuance to win attention in fragmented markets. In MENA, brands that test and tailor content regionally outperform those that rely on generic, one-size-fits-all messaging.
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4. Expand your reach by exploring the open app economy, not just the same top 5 platforms. Advertisers who diversify beyond the dominant apps tap into overlooked channels where high-intent users are spending the bulk of their time.

Measure What Matters More Than Just CPA

For years, marketers across MENA have centered performance strategies around driving down CPA and CPI — racing to the lowest cost per outcome as if it were the definitive metric of success. But in a more mature ecosystem, that thinking can become limiting. Shy argues that while efficiency still matters, the smartest advertisers today are recalibrating their models around longer-term signals. Metrics like Install to conversion ratio, cohorted CAC, average order value, return rates, and user lifetime value give a clearer picture of sustainable growth and help brands differentiate between traffic that converts versus traffic that sticks.

“The ones that we see the most success with are the companies that are looking at lower downstream events post install. Of course, that first purchase efficiency, that customer acquisition cost is going to be super important. But if we think about LTV, returning customers, AOVs, and just the quality of those users that come back, that's where the CPA turns into more of a guideline.”

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In the rewards app space, this mindset is already influencing how platforms define acquisition success. One campaign from Receipt Hog focused less on driving volume and more on acquiring users who submitted more in-app actions, like uploading receipts, within the first week. The result was stronger week-two retention and higher revenue per user.

Ready to dive deeper into the latest app growth trends? Download The 2025 State of Mobile App Growth Survey to explore the data behind these trends and more insights for app marketers.
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Fight Fraud with AI and Education

Ad fraud isn't just a line item. It’s a systemic issue that distorts campaign data and erodes trust between marketers and platforms. In emerging markets, where oversight and verification may lag, the damage can be even more profound. Shy believes that tackling fraud takes more than black-box filtering. It requires education, partnership, and a willingness to expose how fraud is defined, tracked, and removed. Done right, this approach preserves the integrity of every optimization layer built on top of it.

“There's an estimated $1.6 billion spent last year on fraud. We're very proud of the work we've done with the IAB… to produce a report on ad fraud, the various different types of ad fraud... We're in a position to educate and improve our pre-bid, post-bid, rule-based and AI-driven fraud detection to make sure that we're not only buying clean traffic but also learning and optimising on that.”

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In regions with high exposure to invalid traffic, some performance marketers have started benchmarking their programmatic channels against walled gardens, not just for scale, but for traffic quality. Teams working with independent fraud measurement providers like mFilterit have emphasized the importance of combining pre-bid, post-bid, and behavioral filters to ensure clean, learnable signals. By aligning fraud prevention closely with media buying, they’ve been able to protect their optimization models while maintaining performance standards traditionally reserved for closed platforms.

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Don’t Buy into One‑Size‑Fits‑All Creative

MENA is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse mobile markets in the world. While many brands assume they can get by with Arabic and English assets, Shy points out that the region requires far more nuance. From dialect and humor to typography and color psychology, local expectations shift dramatically between countries and even cities. Brands that succeed, he says, are those that abandon one-size-fits-all creative strategies in favor of fast, data-driven iteration and cultural fluency.

“I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all. I don't think velocity is just one way to dominate in creative. There are so many different variables and I think really taking a scientific approach to how you define your brand identity, how you stand out from the crowd, how you win that attention from the user, that's how you're going to win in the region because it's incredibly fragmented, incredibly diverse and hyper competitive.”

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Retail marketers working across Central Asia and the Gulf have demonstrated this with high-impact campaigns segmented by geography. At Airba Fresh, rather than run a universal message, creative variations were built around regional seasonality and product interest, leading to stronger first-order performance and repeat rates.

Tap the Long Tail of the App Economy

It’s one of the most overlooked truths in mobile: users spend most of their time outside the handful of dominant apps where advertisers concentrate their budgets. Shy calls this the open app economy and argues that the tools now exist to access it at scale. Reaching high-intent users scattered across thousands of apps used to be a challenge. But with the rise of machine learning and smarter contextual modeling, it’s becoming one of the most efficient growth levers available.

“90 % of time spent on mobile phones is in-app, and 55% is spent in the open app economy. The budget split in the MENA region does not reflect this. But 70 % of the budgets are spent on four or five different apps... Where you have an opportunity to reach 270 million customers across 810,000 apps in MENA, using an incredible technology like Bidease that employs neural networks to find those customers is a lever that I encourage advertisers to lean into and test out.”

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Advertisers in verticals like social discovery and lifestyle have begun shifting strategy. Dating.com used programmatic advertising to reach niche audiences where intent is highest. These campaigns lowered their CPIs by 93% and improved their cost per registration by 5x compared to more traditional channels.

Learn More About Smarter Growth

As Shy makes clear, the most successful marketers are no longer chasing the cheapest installs or relying on one-size-fits-all strategies. They’re investing in fraud transparency, embracing creative complexity, and scaling beyond the obvious channels. In today’s mobile economy, that’s what smarter growth looks like: intentional, data-driven, and deeply localized.

‍To see how your team stacks up and where there’s room to grow, download the 2025 State of Mobile App Growth Survey. It’s full of breakdowns on budget allocation, audience precision, creative testing, and more. Use it as a benchmark for where the market is headed and how to stay ahead of it. Get the report now.