Kingdom accounts for 29% of GCC ad market

Saudi Arabia’s advertising market is estimated at nearly SR 1.5 billion and accounts for 29 percent of the total GCC market, said Faras Adel Al-Maddah, chairman of the Advertising Committee at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He estimated the Kingdom’s electronic advertising market at 12 percent of the total or SR 150 million. “Electronic advertising rose in the Kingdom 14 times during the last five years from SR 11 million in 2008 to SR 150 million in 2012,” he explained.
Saudi Arabia has been placed second in the Middle East in terms of Internet use, Al-Maddah said. About 49 percent of the country’s population or 13 million people make use of the information superhighway.
“There are six million Facebook users in the Kingdom,” Al-Maddah said. “Saudis use mainly Google, YouTube and Facebook and electronic advertising target these users.”
Saudi Arabia has one of the largest No. of YouTube users in the world. “People in the Kingdom watch programs on YouTube 90 million times in a day, registering a 50 percent increase in the number of viewers in 2012, compared to the previous year, he added. He expected the Kingdom’s advertising market would cross SR 2 billion this year.