Digital advertising has grown to become one of the most important forms of marketing worldwide. With exceedingly widespread digital content, and high internet penetration rates across the world, digital advertising has become an essential channel through which marketers promote their businesses. In 2021, more than half of all
, while television received less than a quarter of total advertising expenditure that year. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is no exception to the growing investment in digital ads. In 2020,
amounted to around 4.4 billion U.S. dollars and it is expected to increase to 7.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2024.
Overview of MENA market
Not surprisingly, the MENA region is demonstrating a similar trend to the global one. By 2024,
internet ad expenditure was forecasted to increase by 20 percent, while newspaper ad spend was expected to decline by around 13 percent. The digital advertising has become one of the most competitive industries in the MENA region with huge potential for growth with regards to ad spend. In 2021, the UAE was ranked the fourth
most attractive country for digital agency professionals worldwide. In line with consumer trends for the region which has a traditionally strong social user base,
social channels accounted for more than half of the total digital ad spend, surpassing global benchmarks. Despite the region’s classification as an emerging digital ad market with regards to international ad spend per capita, its focus on growth areas of video and social show that it is ahead of formal adoption when compared with more mature markets.
Mobile advertising
With a young population and soaring smartphone penetration, an ever-growing share of internet traffic is generated through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Thus, marketing experts are emphasizing mobile marketing initiatives as an essential tool in their strategies. With the
number of mobile internet users in MENA forecasted to reach around 357 million by 2025, the market is growing exponentially fast when it comes to mobile advertising. As a result, the “mobile-first” strategy in which marketing aims at designing and developing an online experience for mobile before designing for the desktop web or any other device has been picked up in recent years. In a survey conducted in 2020, the majority of responding marketers from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) agreed or strongly agreed that they a
dopted a “mobile-first" strategy..
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