Pinterest advertising for Gulf brands: access, formats and rules

Few Gulf media plans include Pinterest, and one reason has been practical: buying it from the region was awkward. That is starting to shift. Pinterest opened for advertising in 30 new countries in October 2024, naming the UAE and Saudi Arabia among them. Its first employee in the region followed in March 2026, a Dubai-based head of sales partnerships covering the Middle East and North Africa. Then, in July 2026, Saudia became the first airline from the Middle East to run ads on Pinterest.

Does Pinterest suit your category?

Start with the question of fit. People come to Pinterest to plan, and by Pinterest's figures 96 percent of text searches carry no brand name, so users tend to arrive before they have made up their minds. That favours categories where Gulf buyers plan ahead: interiors and the home, weddings and events, fashion including modest fashion, beauty, travel and food. Pinterest recommends planning seasonal content 45 to 60 days ahead, so Ramadan and Eid preparation has to begin well before the season.

Buying happens through a partner

Pinterest's help centre publishes the list of countries where businesses can set up an ad account for themselves, and the Gulf is absent from it. That same page lists DMS, a Choueiri Group company, as the partner covering Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a role DMS has held since July 2024. In practice, a Gulf-based brand, or the agency running its media, buys Pinterest through DMS rather than self-serve.

Whether you can reach Gulf audiences is a different matter, and there the answer is yes. The UAE and Saudi Arabia both appear in the market list for Premiere Spotlight, Pinterest's premium format, and a Red Sea Global campaign that Pinterest wrote up as a case study targeted both.

The formats on offer

• When Pinterest and DMS held a summit in Dubai in 2024, the regional formats they named included direct links, Performance+, shopping, carousel and product Pins.
• Premiere Spotlight runs full-width video in premium placements. You book it with a sales representative, pay a daily rate, and outside the US choose a run of one day or three.
• Shopping is the uncertain one. Pinterest is not clear about which countries its shopping ads cover, so confirm catalogue and shopping formats with DMS before you plan around them.

What regional campaigns have reported

• Saudia used full-width video in July 2026. According to trade reports, its cost per thousand impressions came in 30 percent under benchmark, cost per click 25 percent under, and click-through 75 percent over.
• For Red Sea Global, which targeted Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Pinterest reports, against travel benchmarks, a 74 percent higher engagement rate, 67 percent lower cost per outbound click and outbound click-through 1.1 times higher.
• In autumn 2025 Pinterest shared rising searches for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, among them classy hijabi outfits (up 176 percent), workplace design (up 1,209 percent) and home office setups (up 398 percent).

Be more careful with the headline audience claims. Speaking to Arab News in October 2025, Pinterest's chief revenue officer at the time said Saudi Arabia had generated over a billion Pinterest searches in the preceding year, and that Pinterest reached more than 30 percent of people online in the Middle East. Both figures rest on that one interview, and Pinterest does not publish user numbers for any Gulf country.

Arabic, and how Pinterest counts the Gulf

Pinterest's Arabic version has been live since July 2021 across its iPhone and Android apps and the website. In its financial reporting the Gulf falls under Rest of World, which grew 15 percent to 377 million monthly users in the second quarter of 2026. Revenue per user in that group is a fraction of North America's: 23 US cents a quarter against 8.30 dollars. Speaking in May, Pinterest's finance chief described the effect of the regional conflict on revenue as small. Whether Arabic works as a targeting language has not been confirmed, so check with DMS before relying on it.

What each country allows

• UAE. Banned: alcohol, physical casinos, physical pharmacies, medical devices, over-the-counter drugs, and formula for babies under 24 months. Allowed with licences or approvals: education, financial services, real estate and energy drinks.
• Saudi Arabia. Banned: alcohol and physical casinos. Registration or a licence required: financial services, food, infant formula, medical devices and over-the-counter drugs.
• Kuwait. Banned: alcohol, casinos and pork.
• Qatar. Banned: alcohol and casinos. Approval required: financial services.
• Bahrain. Banned: alcohol, casinos, infant formula, CBD brand content and off-plan real estate.
• Oman. Banned: alcohol, casinos, pharmacies, medical devices, over-the-counter drugs, financial services, lingerie and swimwear, and pork.

When Pinterest's updated ad guidelines apply from 12 November 2026, these country rules stay substantively the same, and political advertising remains banned in every market.

Thinking about adding Pinterest to your Gulf media plan? ALXO is happy to talk through the buying route, the creative and whether your category is a good fit.