The MENA Power List 2026: WPP Media MENA’s Amer El Hajj

WPP Media MENA's Amer El Hajj on why brands must treat media as an investment, not a cost, and prioritise returns over cheaper media buying.

With over two decades in the MENA media industry, Amer brings deep experience across operations, negotiation, and media investment strategy. His track record earned him the role of CEO at GroupM MENA, and subsequently CEO of WPP Media MENA, where he leads the region across 13 markets including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Levant, Qatar, Morocco and beyond.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE PAST YEAR

This wasn’t a win or an award; it was a launch. One of our clients was bringing a new brand to market, and the pressure was real on both sides. What I’ll remember is how we worked. The client showed up as a true partner – with patience, empathy and support for our team, even in the hardest moments. And our people met it with the same determination. Together, under real pressure, we delivered. Everyone who watched it saw what that partnership was: a reminder of how the relationship between an agency and its client is supposed to work.

RAPID FIRE

Best book you’ve read in the past 12 months
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela.

One thing the industry needs to improve as a priority
Pricing on value, not volume. The industry still sells media by the unit, not the outcome.

One point of focus for 2026 within the organisation
Retaining and protecting the talent that built us.

One quality you believe is essential to leadership
Composure – especially when everything around is anything but.

Words of advice to young leaders
Be patient; rushing does more harm than good.

One ad that you enjoyed in the past12 months
“The PIF Effect” – a fantastic docuseries created by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

One thing that you’ve learnt in the past 12 months
Not every battle is worth showing up to.

POWER ESSAY: THE BIGGEST NUMBER NOBODY MANAGES

Media is one of the biggest pots of money a company can freely decide how to spend. Unlike rent or salaries, leadership decides how much to spend and where; they can move it, cut it or double it overnight. It is a huge, controllable number. It is also the one they consider the least like an investment. That is the uncomfortable truth of our industry, and we don’t say it out loud
often enough.

There is also an important point for our industry to acknowledge. Clients treat media as a cost because we taught them to. For years we sold it as one – by the impression, by the spot and by the placement. Almost, by the kilo. We competed on who was cheapest, not on who returned the most. We measured ourselves by how much we bought, not by what it was worth. If media looks like a cost to be cut, it is partly because we handed clients the scissors.

And squeezing media usually backfires. The cheapest cost-per-thousand-impressions is not the best outcome. Buying media cheaper often destroys the very return it was meant to protect. Cheaper media is not a saving. It is the most expensive mistake a marketer, a procurement lead or an auditor can make, because it looks good on a spreadsheet and quietly loses the market.

Meanwhile, the buying itself is being automated. Placing the order, which was once a real part of the job, is fast becoming a machine task. If we focus only on transactions, we risk undervaluing the strategic value agencies can create. The value was never in placing the order. It is in the decision about where the money should go, why, and what it should return. That decision is the whole job. Everything else is being automated around it.

So, what would it look like to treat media like an investment? An investor asks three questions of every dollar: what is the return? What is the risk? What else could this money do? These are the questions WPP Media is uniquely placed to answer with the knowledge, experience and tools to turn media from a line item into a disciplined investment decision.

This matters more in our region, not less. For all our growth, we still invest less in media, per person, than almost any mature market on earth. The United States spends more than $1,200 per head on advertising every year; the United Kingdom spends close to $900 per head. The Middle East spends a fraction of that. That gap is not a sign that media matters less here. It is a sign that we have priced it too cheaply and never made the case for what it is worth. Fast-growing markets are exactly where undisciplined money gets wasted. In a boom, even a bad investment looks good, so nobody asks if the money could have done more. That is precisely when discipline pays.

None of this happens by playing it safe. It takes an ambitious agency, a brave one, willing to sit across from a client and tell them the truth: you cannot buy results cheaply, and you certainly cannot automate them. The easy path is to nod, quote a lower price and keep the client comfortable. The braver path is to say the uncomfortable thing, and to mean it. That is the difference between a supplier and a partner.

Let me say plainly what “media investment” is supposed to mean, and too rarely does: our job is not only to buy media; it is to invest our clients’ money better than anyone else can, and to be paid for the business outcome, not just effort.

The responsibility to advance this shift starts with us: we price media as an investment first and bring clients with us. Media is not a cost to be minimised. It is capital to be optimised. That is the shift that matters – not in the tools, but in the money.

Originally published in Campaign Middle East.