Challenging norms to upgrade Ooredoo Groups media planning and buying

Ooredoo Group is a leading international communications company that delivers mobile, fixed, broadband internet, and corporate managed services. The company operates in markets across the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, serving consumers and businesses with a focus on enriching people's lives and stimulating human growth through communications.

Ooredoo Group - Innovating Media Planning & Buying at Scale

Challenge. In markets where Ooredoo is the incumbent, over 75-80% of spend had historically skewed to lower-funnel performance. We reframed our group strategy to "behave like a challenger," building future demand by prioritising non-customers with messages proven to drive consideration: Value, Network, Home Internet, Roaming and Gaming. We set an ambitious design target of 70%+ reach at ~5 weekly frequency per message in 5 countries across YouTube and Meta, with incremental high-value reach on TikTok and Snap via innovative formats, and contextual experiments via DV360.

What's new.

1. Attention as a buying currency. We operationalised attention KPIs (APM/aCPM) using Integral Ad Science with Lumen's ground-truth models to identify high-attention placements and suppress low-quality inventory. This shifted optimisation from cheap impressions to verified viewed attention, revealing Facebook and YouTube as best value, and guiding format choices like Reels, YouTube Bumpers and TikTok In-feed.
2. Lift over last-click. We funded a Bayesian time-series incrementality program (Kuwait & Oman) to estimate conversions absent advertising, replacing proxy metrics with causal impact on sales and site behaviour. Early reads indicated 300k+ incremental purchases and +1.2M incremental direct/search sessions over May-June.
3. Platform-native creative & format testing. In-stream on Meta outperformed; YouTube delivered superior VTR; Snap & TikTok initially lagged on VTR-so we pivoted into Snap Lens and TikTok creators, lifting engagement and playtime while cutting CPMs. DV360 contextual packages aligned creative to environments like gaming to boost relevance.

How we executed.

• Audience strategy: Prioritised non-customers while managing frequency to avoid saturation (3-4 avg/wk). Challenger competitive targeting consistently delivered higher attention-per-thousand.
• Formats & placements: Systematically compared aCPM/vCPM and attention by format; Bumpers, Reels and TikTok In-feed emerged as the most efficient for viewed impressions
• Adaptive optimisation: Weekly flighting and in-flight pivots scaled high-attention inventory and suppressed waste. Where VTR was low, we reallocated to creators/lenses and high-performing in-stream.

What we achieved.

• Mass efficient reach: 50M-60M+ incremental reach per theme with 3-4 frequency/week; 50M-60M+ views per wave across platforms.
• Quality of exposure: vs. benchmarks, we cut YouTube CPV by 40-90% and Meta CPV by up to 100%; VTR gains reached +84% on YouTube and +250% on Meta in specific waves/markets.
• Brand impact: Meta Brand Lift in Kuwait delivered +6.4 pts ad recall (vs ~5.5 pts telco avg). YouTube Brand/Search Lift registered up to +28% search lift in Arabic; Algeria/Oman studies recorded meaningful ad-recall and favourability uplifts
• Commercial effect: Kuwait summer roaming full-funnel push delivered 796k KWD gross profit with 57,960 assisted conversions across Google & Meta; assisted revenue attribution validated the attention-led plan.

We moved a multi-market telco off legacy efficiency proxies to a causal, attention-verified operating system for media. By uniting creative (short, vertical, platform-native), planning (non-customer reach & context), buying (attention-priced supply), and measurement (lift & incrementality), we demonstrated that brand demand creation can be engineered-and scaled-without sacrificing efficiency. The approach is now the group's blueprint for 2026, with budgets spanning Google/YouTube, Meta, Snap, TikTok and DV360, and ring-fenced investment for attention and incrementality measurement to keep us honest.