Mumin Marketing Memo (M3) - Case 5
The Gulf's Digital Marketing Boom
What the Numbers Actually Show
Start with a number that reframes the whole conversation.
At the start of 2025, Saudi Arabia had 33.9 million internet users, a penetration rate of 99.0%. Its 34.1 million social media identities equalled 99.6% of the population. The UAE also sits at 99% internet penetration. On raw connectivity, the Gulf is not catching up to mature digital markets. In several Gulf states, it is already operating at their level.
Yet most global marketing coverage still treats the region as an emerging market or a luxury-spend curiosity. The data tells a more specific and more useful story, and it is not simply "the Gulf is booming." It is that the region's digital infrastructure has already matured while its advertising market is still catching up to it. That gap is the entire opportunity.
The Scale of the Surge
The spend figures are real and rising. According to marketing intelligence firm Warc Lions Intelligence, data shared with Arabian Gulf Business Insight, Saudi Arabia will spend more than $3 billion on advertising in 2027, up from $2.4 billion in 2025, the highest in the MENA region. The UAE is expected to reach $2.7 billion by 2027, up from $2.15 billion in 2025. Digital advertising growth across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan is projected to stay consistently above 10% into 2027, against a global average of 8%.
Widen the lens to the region, and the momentum is clearer. Per the Interactive Advertising Bureau MENA, the wider MENA region spent almost $6.95 billion on digital advertising in 2024, a 19.8% year-on-year increase. That figure is MENA-wide, not Gulf-specific, but it establishes the direction of travel: within the region's digital advertising, social media now dominates the mix, accounting for 60% of all digital ad spend in MENA in 2024.
Then there is the connectivity layer beneath the spend. Near-universal internet penetration in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In Saudi Arabia, Snapchat alone reaches 90.7% of the eligible audience. This is not an audience a brand is waiting to reach. It is already online, highly connected, and increasingly contested by brands.
The Operator's Lens: What the Growth Rate Hides
Here is the part the boom narrative misses, and it is backed by the analysts who produced the numbers.
Measured against the size of its own economy, advertising investment in the Gulf remains low relative to mature Western markets. According to Statista data compiled by DataReportal, the UAE spends just 0.29% of its GDP on advertising, and Saudi Arabia 0.21%. The United Kingdom spends 1.66% and the United States 1.46%.
Sit with that. The region posting double-digit ad-spend growth is simultaneously spending a fraction of what mature Western markets spend relative to economic size. This is not the profile of a market whose advertising investment has caught up with its digital maturity. It is a market where the relationship between economic size, digital adoption, and advertising spend is still being rewritten.
There are two honest ways to read that gap, and the professionals disagree in an instructive way. IAB MENA's executive director Ian Manning attributes the low ratio partly to structure: the region is heavily digital and social-media dominated, and those channels carry lower unit costs than traditional advertising. That is true, and it tempers the simplest interpretation. But Warc's own director of data, James McDonald, adds a sharper caution: "We are starting to see a divergence in the correlation between ad spend and economic growth when it comes to digital." Digital ad spending, he notes, is outpacing overall economic growth, while few advertisers are actually increasing their total spend.
Put those two expert readings together, and the picture is neither "boom" nor "bust." It is a market where digital adoption has run ahead of advertising investment, and where the spend that exists is concentrating into performance channels rather than expanding the overall commitment. For a brand, that is not a closed market. It is an under-built one.
The Purchase Runs on Trust, Not Just Platforms
The most useful behavioural finding for anyone marketing here concerns how the purchase decision moves.
According to a YouGov Ramadan 2025 study surveying 1,023 Saudi and 1,031 UAE residents, 61% of consumers in both markets are likely or very likely to shop for Ramadan on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. But the strongest reported purchase driver was not the platform itself. It was the recommendation. Referrals from trusted influencers took the top spot in what drives purchases, cited by 25% of Saudi and 23% of UAE consumers.
This aligns with what advertising professionals on the ground report. As Middle East advertising expert Austyn Allison observed to AGBI, influencers are unusually well trusted in markets like the UAE, and brands spend heavily on social endorsements. The pattern is consistent: in the Gulf, the trusted-recommendation layer sits above the platform mechanics. The platform delivers the audience. The trusted voice delivers the conversion.
The Ramadan Economy
For marketers operating in this region, Ramadan is best understood as a distinct commercial period, not a seasonal add-on to the calendar. In these markets, it is the most consequential retail moment of the year.
The scale was already substantial years ago. Online spending across MENA was estimated at $6.2 billion during Ramadan in 2022, according to figures reported via Arab News. What matters more than the exact figure is the structural shift beneath it: during Ramadan, consumption does not just rise, it reorganises. Buying, viewing, and attention patterns move around fasting, Iftar, and Eid.
That is where many brands miss the opportunity. A brand that reskins its usual creative with a lantern and a crescent moon is advertising during Ramadan. A brand that understands the emotional and cultural architecture of the month is advertising to it. Given that the region's purchases run through trust rather than reach, the difference is not cosmetic. It is the difference between being tolerated and being chosen.
Toward West Africa
The Gulf is only one half of the story. The other is West Africa, where digital commerce is developing under very different trust and infrastructure conditions. Where the Gulf's challenge is a market spending below its economic weight, West Africa's is a market where digital trust itself is still being built. That analysis deserves its own issue, with its own data, and it will get one.
The M3 Read
The Gulf has the connectivity of an advanced digital market and an advertising market still catching up to it. That is the whole thesis in one line: the infrastructure is mature, the spend is not yet, and, in my read, the craft is still thinner than the capital.
The cost of entry is also rising, and the data shows where fastest. Between 2023 and 2024, CPMs inflated 30% in Qatar and 26% in Saudi Arabia, while the UAE's more established market moved just 4%. That 4% suggests a more mature and relatively stable auction in the UAE, while the sharper inflation in Saudi Arabia and Qatar points to faster-rising competition for digital inventory and audience attention. The cost of building share of attention is climbing fastest in the markets where digital advertising is expanding most aggressively.
The brands that will own the Gulf's next decade are not the ones waiting for the market to declare itself mature. They are the ones spending against the region's real economic weight rather than its current ad ratio, earning their way into the trust networks that actually move the purchase, and doing both while attention is still comparatively affordable.
The Gulf has near-universal digital connectivity, but advertising investment still represents only a fraction of economic output. Is your brand positioned for the market it is now, or the market it is about to become?
A note on sourcing. M3 is a data-led publication. Every figure in this analysis is traced to its primary source and labelled by geography, because "the Gulf," "the GCC," and "MENA" are not interchangeable. Where a claim is interpretation rather than data, it is marked as such. Where data is dated, the year is stated. Where sources offer competing readings, both are presented.
- Internet and social media penetration (Saudi Arabia, UAE) - DataReportal / Kepios, Digital 2025 reports. Saudi figures as of January 2025.
- Advertising spend forecasts (Saudi Arabia, UAE) and ad-spend-to-GDP ratios - Warc Lions Intelligence and Statista, compiled by DataReportal, reported via Arabian Gulf Business Insight (AGBI).
- MENA digital advertising spend and social share - Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) MENA, Digital Adspend 2024.
- Expert commentary - Ian Manning (IAB MENA) and James McDonald (Warc), via AGBI.
- Consumer and Ramadan shopping behaviour - YouGov Ramadan 2025 study (n = 2,054; 1,023 Saudi Arabia, 1,031 UAE).
- Ramadan online spend - RedSeer, reported via Arab News (2022 figure).
- CPM inflation (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) - Acquisit, 2023–2024.
M3 - The Mumin Marketing Memo is a bi-weekly marketing analysis series by Sadick Mumin, Marketing Manager, Doha, Qatar. Published on sadickmumin.com and LinkedIn.
