Digital 2020 Report – Middle East Overview

The good folk at We Are Social and Hootsuite have updated their brilliant resource which provides country by country insights into the state of digital – from internet penetration, to social media behaviour to ecommerce trends to smart-homes and gaming.

Here at ACEDE, we are focused on what is happening in emerging markets, so this Middle East view is the first of a series of articles, where we analyse the report and use it to dispel some myths and stereotypes about the state of digital and ecommerce.

Insights from the Global Report

At 247 pages, the global report contains some fascinating information about the way the world uses digital. Read it here. 

Here are a few things that caught our eye…

Saudi Arabia ranks #3 in the world for “time spent using games consoles”.  Egypt is #10, just above the global average. Note – most game consoles have video watching apps including Netflix and YouTube, so use of game consoles doesn’t mean all that time is playing games!

Saudi Arabia ranks #6 for “Use of voice search and voice commands”. The UAE ranks #11 on this list. However, the Middle East is not well represented in the countries where smart-home devices are used widely which suggests that voice search is primarily via smartphone (Siri & Ask Google)

Social Media

The UAE and Kuwait are obsessed with Social Media. They rank = #1 in the world for social media penetration. The stats say that 99% of internet population is connected. Bahrain at #10 just beats out Saudi Arabia comes in at #11.

95% of the UAE’s internet users can be targeted using Facebook Ads. Which is more than any other country. For comparison, only 48% of Saudi Arabia’s internet users can be targeted by Facebook ads. HOWEVER – UAE and Saudi Facebook users click less ads than the world average.

A quick note on eligibility. Most Ad Networks do not allow users under 18 to be targeted by ads. So while the actual numbers of users might be higher, they don’t count in the numbers. 

Many businesses in the Middle East are obsessed with Instagram, especially as a marketing channel. However the numbers don’t show why there is this favouritism. In Kuwait, 55% of the audience can be reached by Instagram. It’s 51% in Bahrain and 44% in Saudi and UAE. This is higher than the global average of 15%, but not as high as Facebook or even Snapchat.

At #5 on the Snapchat ladder, Saudi Arabia has a reported 16.1 million people who can be reached which equates to 60% of the internet population there. 20% of UAE internet users use Snapchat.

Twitter is often overlooked in the Middle East. It certainly serves a different purpose to social networks like Instagram and Facebook. However – it shouldn’t be completely ignored. Once again, Saudi Arabia ranks #4 in terms of total numbers of people who can be reached and #1 in terms of the percentage of people online. 60% of Kuwaiti internet users, 58% of Bahraini users and 35% of UAE internet users are on Twitter.

We’re going to skip over LinkedIn in this article and devote a separate piece to B2B numbers.

Ecommerce

The Middle East still lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to Ecommerce. Globally 74% of people said they bought something online in the last month. In Saudi Arabia, that number was 73%. In the UAE it was 66%.

Consumer goods buyers in the Middle East also spend less than the global average. The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) globally was $499 while in the UAE it as $426 and in Saudi Arabia the number is only $73.

Stay tuned for more detailed analysis for the region from the Country by Country reports.