Every impression had to do double duty, heightening allure while driving sales.
In the Gulf's crowded luxury market, Ounass discovered that fame without trust is a kind of beautiful paralysis — consumers who admire but do not act. By refusing the old division between brand storytelling and performance marketing, the retailer wove aspiration and intention into a single continuous experience on YouTube, moving 3.9 million people from passive admiration into active consideration. It is a quiet but significant demonstration that in the modern attention economy, the dream and the transaction need not live in separate houses.
- Ounass had built one of the Gulf's most recognized luxury names, yet millions of admirers were quietly completing their purchases somewhere else.
- The campaign launched in late 2025 with cinematic hero films placed on YouTube's most visible real estate, reaching 20 million unique viewers in Saudi Arabia alone and flooding living rooms via Connected TV.
- The brand then fractured that spectacle into shorter, targeted formats — Shorts, Demand Gen storefronts, and prestige content placements — sustaining the story across every stage of the customer journey.
- Remarketing audiences built from high-intent viewers were then met with Shopping Campaigns, closing the loop between emotional pull and actual purchase.
- The final count: 89 million views, 69% view-through rates in the UAE shattering regional benchmarks, and 3.9 million consumers shifted into the consideration phase — the critical territory between knowing and choosing.
Marc-Oliver Schmiedle, who leads marketing for Ounass, faced a problem disguised as success. The Gulf's largest luxury e-commerce platform was widely known across Saudi Arabia and the UAE — but awareness and purchase intent had drifted apart. Consumers admired the brand, scrolled its collections, and then shopped elsewhere. He called it the luxury paradox.
The traditional answer would have been to choose: invest in brand mystique or invest in conversion. Ounass chose neither and both. In the fall and winter of 2025, the team launched a three-phase YouTube strategy built on the premise that every impression should do two jobs at once.
The first phase was spectacle. A cinematic hero film, produced with Google's Creative Works team, ran on YouTube Masthead and Connected TV — arriving on living room screens with the weight of a short film. Twenty million unique viewers saw it in Saudi Arabia; 6.1 million more in the UAE.
The second phase was adaptation. That same film was broken into shorter formats, placed alongside prestigious fashion content, embedded into YouTube Shorts, and transformed through Demand Gen into something closer to a shoppable experience. The campaign accumulated 89 million views, with view-through rates of 69% in the UAE — well above regional benchmarks. Demand Gen emerged as the most powerful bridge between admiration and action.
The third phase was conversion. Audiences who had already engaged with the campaign — site visitors, deep viewers — were gathered into custom remarketing pools and reached with Shopping Campaigns. The invitation was simple: you already want this.
A Brand Lift study measured the full arc: 3.6 million people gained awareness, 5.3 million retained ad recall, and 3.9 million crossed into consideration. In Saudi Arabia, more than half of viewers began searching for Ounass by name. The luxury paradox had not been solved by choosing between the dream and the sale — it had been dissolved by making them inseparable.
Marc-Oliver Schmiedle runs marketing for Ounass, the Gulf's largest luxury e-commerce platform, and he had a problem that looked like success. The brand was famous. Everyone in Saudi Arabia and the UAE knew the name. But knowing and buying are different things, and Ounass was stuck in what he calls the luxury paradox: millions of people admired the brand from a distance, scrolled through its collections, felt the pull of aspiration—and then went somewhere else to actually shop.
For decades, luxury marketing has split itself in two. One side tells the dream. The other closes the sale. Brand building and performance marketing live in separate houses, and companies have learned to choose between them. Ounass decided to stop choosing. In the fall and winter of 2025, the retailer launched a three-part YouTube strategy designed to make every single impression do two jobs at once: deepen the brand's mystique while moving people toward purchase.
The first phase was spectacle. Working with Google's Creative Works team, Ounass produced a cinematic hero film—the kind of long-form advertisement that feels less like selling and more like being invited into a world. They placed it on YouTube Masthead, the platform's most visible real estate, and paired it with Video Reach campaigns. The numbers were staggering: 20 million unique people in Saudi Arabia saw it. Another 6.1 million in the UAE. The film ran on Connected TV, which meant it arrived on the big screen, in living rooms, with the production value of a short film. Ounass became impossible to ignore.
But awareness alone wasn't the goal. The second phase required a shift in thinking. The team took that hero film and broke it into pieces—shorter edits, different angles, formats designed for different moments in the customer journey. They ran Video Views campaigns to keep the story alive. They placed ads alongside prestigious fashion and beauty content through YouTube Lineups. They used Demand Gen to turn the ads into something closer to a virtual storefront, a place where people could move from admiration to action. And they embedded striking visual moments into YouTube Shorts, the short-form feed where people spend their scrolling time, keeping Ounass top of mind without demanding attention.
The results across both countries: 89 million views. View-through rates of 69 percent in the UAE and 50 percent in Saudi Arabia—numbers that shattered regional retail benchmarks. Shorts delivered the second-highest lift in consideration. But Demand Gen proved to be the real engine. It was the format that proved thoughtful brand-building could actually move the needle on sales.
The third phase was conversion. By this point, Ounass had built an audience of people who had already been touched by the campaign—website visitors drawn in by the awareness work, viewers who had engaged deeply with the videos. The team built custom remarketing audiences from these high-intent interactions and reached them with Shopping Campaigns. The message was simple: you've already fallen for this. Now buy it. And they did.
The Brand Lift study quantified the full journey. Brand awareness lifted by 3.6 million people. Ad recall reached 5.3 million. And 3.9 million people moved into the consideration phase—the critical middle ground between knowing a brand and choosing it. More than half of viewers in Saudi Arabia began searching for Ounass by name after seeing the ads, a shift from passive admiration to active intent. The luxury paradox had been solved not by choosing between storytelling and sales, but by weaving them together so tightly that one became the other.
Citas Notables
In the high-stakes world of luxury, choosing between awareness and action is so last season.— Marc-Oliver Schmiedle, Ounass
Demand Gen proved to be the catalyst that really took results to the next level, proving that thoughtful brand-building is the true engine of a healthy mid and bottom line.— Ounass campaign analysis
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
The luxury paradox sounds like a real problem. How do you know awareness wasn't translating to sales? What did the data actually show?
We could see people engaging with our platforms constantly—exploring collections, reading about the brand, spending time in our digital spaces. But when we looked at who was actually buying, the overlap was smaller than it should have been. People knew us, but we weren't their first choice when they decided to shop. We were the place they visited to dream, not to purchase.
So you decided to use YouTube to change that. Why YouTube specifically? There are a lot of platforms.
YouTube is where storytelling and commerce can actually live together. It's where you can show a product in a cinematic, aspirational way—the way luxury should be presented—but also reach people at scale and measure whether that inspiration actually moves them to action. The platform has the reach, the formats, and the tools to do both things at once.
Walk me through the three parts. The first one sounds like you just wanted to be everywhere.
Not everywhere—unmissable. We needed to establish that Ounass was a destination worth paying attention to. The Masthead placement and Connected TV meant we showed up on the biggest screens, in the most premium positions. It was about making a statement: we're here, we're serious, and we're worth your time.
And then you broke that film into pieces for the second phase.
Exactly. The same story, but adapted for different moments. Some people needed the full cinematic experience. Others were scrolling Shorts and needed just a striking image. Some were in the middle of their journey and needed something that felt more like a storefront. Each format fed into the next, so the customer journey felt seamless rather than like a series of ads.
The Demand Gen results seem to be the real surprise. Why did that format work so well?
Because it bridged the gap we were trying to close. It wasn't just storytelling and it wasn't just performance marketing. It was brand-building that looked and felt like a shopping experience. People could see the aspirational content and move toward purchase in the same moment. That's the luxury paradox solved—you don't have to choose anymore.