Who pays for a delivery app promotion in the Gulf
Two Gulf delivery platforms publish opposite answers to this question, and restaurant operators running both markets are usually unaware of it. Snoonu states in its campaign terms that “Snoonu does not bear any costs associated with this offer, and the merchant alone is responsible for these costs.” Jahez runs a “Contribution Hub” and records the split as a pair of fields, “Jahez percentage” and “Restaurant percentage”, refusing to save an offer without one. One assumes zero platform money by default, the other will not accept an offer without a declared split. The two are now one group.
The split between those two defaults is the practical starting point for any regional promotional plan. A discount that costs a restaurant its full face value in Doha and a negotiated share in Riyadh is not the same campaign, even when the marketing calendar calls it one. Most of the platforms below publish less than these two do, and knowing which ones publish nothing is as useful as knowing the rules of the ones that do.
Who pays for a Snoonu offer?
The merchant, in full, and Snoonu publishes it on a public page rather than confining it to a signed agreement. The English text reads “Snoonu does not bear any costs associated with this offer, and the merchant alone is responsible for these costs”, followed by “The merchant may cancel this offer at any time.” The Arabic version on the same page carries the same meaning. Source: partner.snoonu.com/campaigns_t&c.
Paid placement on Snoonu is a separate purchase again, sold under the name “Premium Positions (CPC)”, billed on clicks rather than funded out of margin and invoiced at the end of each month on the clicks actually received. Discount cost and visibility cost are two different bills on this platform, arriving through two different mechanisms, and a chain that has negotiated one has not negotiated the other. The full terms, including what happens to a budget that goes unspent, are on why your restaurant is not showing in Snoonu search.
Why does Jahez make “restaurant contribution” a required field?
Because on Jahez the platform is normally the party that builds the offer, so the split has to be declared before the offer can exist at all. Jahez records ownership of an offer in a field with three values, of which two describe the platform building the campaign and the restaurant joining it. The consequence for funding is direct: a restaurant is usually agreeing to a share of somebody else’s discount rather than pricing its own, and we set the three modes out on why your Jahez promotion is not showing to customers.
Co funding is a whole area of the portal rather than a single field. Jahez carries a section titled “Contribution Hub” and a setting called “Contribution Logic” with two values, “Offer-level” and “Hub-level”, so a chain’s share can be decided per campaign or held centrally. The split is recorded as “Jahez percentage” against “Restaurant percentage”, the input is labelled “Restaurant Contribution”, and Jahez warns that “Restaurant contribution should be entered without vat”. Submission is blocked with “Please fill the field of restaurant contribution”. Typical proportions are not published outside the login and we are not going to estimate them. Source: the public localisation dictionary of the Jahez vendor portal at restaurant-portal.jahez.net.
When can noon Food discount your items without your consent?
When noon is paying for all of it. Its supplemental terms draw the line explicitly: “If Offer is entirely funded by Noon Food, Merchant acknowledges and agrees that Noon Food may discount Merchant’s Items at Noon Food’s discretion. If Offer is at least partially funded by the Merchant, Noon Food may only make an Offer available to Customers with written consent of Merchant.”
noon is therefore the platform that states the rule as a permission boundary rather than a price. Money in from the merchant buys a consent requirement, and no money in removes it. The same section makes approval a platform right in the other direction: “Unless otherwise specified by Noon Food, Merchant will be solely responsible for defining each Offer … including, without limitation, the start date, end date, and budget for each Offer. Each Offer will be subject to Noon Food’s approval.” Reporting back is loosely worded, promising only that noon “will use good faith efforts to provide Merchant with reasonable information regarding Merchant’s Offers”. Source: foodrohelp.noon.com.
How does Careem Food collect the cost of an ad campaign?
By netting it off the payout rather than invoicing for it. The submission step in the Careem partner portal’s advertising builder carries two consent lines, “I authorize Careem to initiate this marketing spend” and “By submitting, you agree that the allocated budget will be deducted from your merchant payout.” A finance team reconciling Careem remittances is looking at figures with marketing already removed.
Careem also gates who may spend at all, which is a funding rule in a different guise. Its builder states that “Only outlets rated 4.0 and above can run ads” and marks the rest “Not eligible for ads, needs a rating of 4.0 or higher”, with a bidding floor per audience, “Floor bid for {{audience}} is {{currency}} {{floor}}. You can bid higher, not lower.” Discounts themselves are a separate track, and Careem’s partner FAQ notes that some are not self service at all: “You can add offers/discounts/cpc activation by emailing partnerssupport.uae@careem.com or by emailing your Account Manager.” Sources: the portal’s own interface dictionary at app.careemnow.com and careem.com/en-AE/food-partner-faqs.
What does Talabat’s reason field say about funding?
It labels the intent behind a promotion, not the split, and Talabat notes it is never shown to customers. Six values exist, COMPETITIVENESS, NMR, TRADING, EXPIRING_SOON, OVERSTOCK and DELISTING. NMR is defined as “Suppliers paying for banners to gain visibility for their products (with or without discount)” and TRADING as “promotions to drive traffic/volume and achieve sales targets (more tactical, eg flash sales, basket discounts)”. The rest describe stock and pricing intent rather than money moving between parties.
NMR is the only one of the six that names a payer, and the payer it names is a supplier rather than the restaurant or the platform. On the customer side Talabat labels platform funded discounts distinctly, since its storefront dictionary contains offerFromTalabat, rendered as “Offer from Talabat”. That label sits in the same carousel as merchant funded discounts, so a customer, and an area manager, cannot tell from the app whose money is behind any given deal. Source: developer.talabat.com/api-specifications.
Which Gulf platforms publish nothing about who funds a discount?
Three of the eight we examined. On HungerStation we searched the entire developer portal, including every Promotions API page, and the Delivery Hero developer documentation, and found no co funding split, no cash budget ceiling and no moderation step. On Keeta we searched both the restaurant and grocery branches of its API documentation and found no funding, budget or approval language at all, and its restaurant branch contains no promotions endpoints in the first place. On Deliveroo the funding split is likewise not published, though Deliveroo does publish the eligibility rules that decide whether a site can run offers at all.
The three absences are worth stating plainly rather than filling in. A chain negotiating on a platform that publishes nothing has no public reference point, and the terms it receives are whatever its account manager offers. That is a weaker position than on Snoonu, where the default is written down in public, or on Jahez, where the form insists a number exists.
What changes now that Jahez owns Snoonu?
Jahez Group has acquired a controlling stake in Snoonu, and lists it among its companies alongside Marn, Logi, Sol, Blu and Co. As of the sources we checked, the two platforms still publish opposite funding defaults, so the divergence described on this page is current rather than historical. Whether it stays that way is a question a regional operator should be asking their account managers on both sides, because a single group harmonising two opposite defaults will move one of them.
One thing the two do share is a floor on speed. Snoonu will not start a campaign sooner than “Time must be at least 2 hours in future”, and Jahez states the same rule as “Offer start time must be at least after 2 hours from the current time”. Until the funding models converge, the practical answer is that a Gulf promotional plan needs a per platform funding line rather than a regional one, and that the record of what actually ran belongs to the restaurant. Kitchain (kitchain.co) captures the discounts rendered on each branch page across these platforms daily, which is the only version of the campaign that is independent of the platform that approved it and the account manager who negotiated it. The platform by platform detail sits on the individual pages, starting with Snoonu and Jahez.