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.
For years, marketers across MENA have centered performance strategies around driving down CPA and CPI — racing to the lowest cost per install 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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit lobortis arcu enim urna adipiscing praesent velit viverra sit semper lorem eu cursus vel hendrerit elementum morbi curabitur etiam nibh justo, lorem aliquet donec sed sit mi dignissim at ante massa mattis.
Vitae congue eu consequat ac felis placerat vestibulum lectus mauris ultrices cursus sit amet dictum sit amet justo donec enim diam porttitor lacus luctus accumsan tortor posuere praesent tristique magna sit amet purus gravida quis blandit turpis.
At risus viverra adipiscing at in tellus integer feugiat nisl pretium fusce id velit ut tortor sagittis orci a scelerisque purus semper eget at lectus urna duis convallis porta nibh venenatis cras sed felis eget neque laoreet suspendisse interdum consectetur libero id faucibus nisl donec pretium vulputate sapien nec sagittis aliquam nunc lobortis mattis aliquam faucibus purus in.
Nisi quis eleifend quam adipiscing vitae aliquet bibendum enim facilisis gravida neque euismod in pellentesque massa placerat volutpat lacus laoreet non curabitur gravida odio aenean sed adipiscing diam donec adipiscing tristique risus amet est placerat in egestas erat.
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua enim ad minim veniam.”
Eget lorem dolor sed viverra ipsum nunc aliquet bibendum felis donec et odio pellentesque diam volutpat commodo sed egestas aliquam sem fringilla ut morbi tincidunt augue interdum velit euismod eu tincidunt tortor aliquam nulla facilisi aenean sed adipiscing diam donec adipiscing ut lectus arcu bibendum at varius vel pharetra nibh venenatis cras sed felis eget.
Start your free consultation today. Create a custom growth strategy with a Bidease specialist.