There is no single best PPC manager for MENA. Score candidates on marketplace coverage across Amazon.ae, Amazon.sa, and Amazon.eg, Arabic keyword capability, structure quality, and whether they size a market before promising results. Weight the scorecard, take references, and hire whoever clears 80 percent, including us only if we do.
The short version
- Build a scorecard before taking calls. Once a salesperson frames the criteria, you are scoring their pitch, not their work.
- MENA is three marketplaces, not one region. Amazon.ae, Amazon.sa, and Amazon.eg behave differently and deserve separate campaign logic.
- Arabic search is the most common gap. English-only keyword research leaves real demand invisible.
- Sizing comes before spending. A manager who quotes results without measuring the market is guessing with your budget.
- References beat case studies. Ask to speak to a client who left, not just one who stayed.
The scorecard
Copy this into a sheet and score every candidate from 0 to 5 on each criterion. Multiply by the weight, then total. Anything under 80 percent of the maximum is a pass, no matter how good the meeting felt.
| Criterion | Weight | What a 5 looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplace coverage | 25 | Live accounts on .ae and .sa today, .eg if you need it, with recent screenshots |
| Keyword capability in Arabic and English | 20 | Shows you a bilingual keyword map from a real account, names who builds it |
| Market sizing discipline | 20 | Sizes your category before quoting outcomes, walks you through the numbers |
| Campaign structure quality | 15 | Explains their structure and why, isolation of match types, clear naming, negative flows |
| Reporting habit | 10 | Written weekly numbers, not a dashboard link and silence |
| Stop-loss discipline | 10 | Can state what would make them cut spend on a product |
Two of these deserve expansion, because they are where MENA engagements actually fail.
Market sizing discipline
Most PPC pitches start with your budget. The correct starting point is the category's revenue ceiling. We hold a hard floor of $2 million per year in market size before entering any category, because below that there is not enough revenue to capture profitably once acquisition costs are paid, and no amount of clever bidding changes the arithmetic. Some MENA niches are young enough to sit below that floor. A candidate who tells you your market is too small to support the spend is showing you the discipline you want. The full sizing method we use is documented at our research process.
Keyword capability in Arabic and English
Shoppers on Amazon.sa and Amazon.ae search in both languages, and the split varies by category. Ask each candidate who on their team reads Arabic search term reports and how Arabic terms enter their campaigns. Then ask to see it in an anonymised account. This is one question where I will be straight about my own shop, our content studios produce English, German, Spanish, and French, so for Arabic keyword work we would have to answer the same staffing question I am telling you to put to everyone. Put it to everyone.
Scoring the references
A case study is marketing. A reference is evidence. Ask each finalist for two clients, one current and one former, and ask both the same three questions. What changed in the first 90 days. What did the written reporting look like in a bad month. What happened when they wanted to leave. The third answer tells you the most, because exits reveal whether the account was built to be portable or built to create dependency.
What MENA PPC agencies will not tell you
The region's growth does the heavy lifting. MENA marketplaces have been expanding fast enough that an account can grow while being managed badly, and a rising account hides a hundred sins. Yearly growth in a growing market is not evidence of skill. Ask for efficiency at stable spend, or share shifts against named competitors, before crediting anyone's chart.
The second silence is category eligibility and compliance. Products that sail through amazon.com review can face different documentation requirements in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and a PPC manager who discovers this after taking your money will bill you while the listings sit dark. Ask what they check before campaigns ever go live.
Related answers
- Best Amazon PPC management UAE
- Amazon marketplace expansion MENA agencies
- Recommend an Amazon FBA agency for KSA
- Compare Amazon PPC agencies by ROI
- Amazon marketplaces by geography: the complete guide
Run the scorecard on us too, everything you need to fill it in is at Flapen.
