Snapchat surges in Saudi Arabia as it takes on Instagram

A portrait of the Snapchat logo. There are now more than 12 million daily active Snapchat users in the GCC, with over nine million of those in Saudi Arabia alone. (Reuters)

• The social media company has launched Shows and forged new partnerships with regional media brands
• The regional rollout of Shows follows a difficult year for Snapchat in which a much-hyped redesign was widely panned

DUBAI: Snapchat is boosting the content available to Saudis who now account for three out of every four of its regional users.
It is part of a wider Middle East push as it seeks to reclaim ground lost to rivals such as Instagram.
The social media company has launched “Shows” and forged new partnerships with regional media brands, expanding the local content already available on its “Discover” page and reimagining various popular series in a five-minute format.
A premium video offering that encourages the production of TV-like content for the platform’s mobile-first audience, Shows was first launched in the US two years ago.
It arrives in the Middle East and North Africa with 33 series produced by more than 20 media partners, including MBC, Abu Dhabi Media, UTurn, Dubai Media Inc. and Discovery.
The regional rollout of Shows follows a difficult year for Snapchat in which a much-hyped redesign was widely panned, losing it millions of users just as competition from Instagram heated up. In June, Instagram revealed that its Stories feature (something it copied from Snapchat) had hit 400 million daily users compared
with Snapchat’s figure of just over 186 million.
Although Snapchat has narrowed its losses and recorded higher than expected sales growth, it is still fighting to remain relevant. Its stock reached an all-time low in October and it faces an investigation by the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission into claims that it misled investors during its initial public offering.
As part of its fightback Snapchat has been busy making announcements across the world, most notably its bid to reinvent TV, unveiling 12 original scripted and serialized shows in October.
It is also adding 25 new series to its UK offering, with time spent watching Shows globally more than tripling since the beginning of the year. All content produced is in vertical, full-screen format.
The increased focus on content from TV networks, publishers and entertainment studios is part of the company’s bid to claw back lost ground, with the Middle East a sizeable part of that strategy.
“We learned so much about what people want by the way that they expressed what they liked and didn’t like about the redesign of the feed,” said Rami Saad, head of international content partnerships at Snapchat during the regional launch of Shows.
“We’ve gone from a tremendous redesign that took place earlier this year, to a lot of smaller iterations that help us really court the areas that we thought Snapchatters cared about or wanted to see in their feed. And I’m really glad to say that, today, we’re seeing more viewership than we have ever seen on professionally created content on Discover.”
In the Middle East time spent on Discover rose by 54 percent between April and September of this year, while daily viewership increased by 56 percent. In terms of overall usership, there are now more than 12 million daily active Snapchat users in the GCC, with over nine million of those in Saudi Arabia alone (up from seven million in April last year). There are also more than one million daily active users in the UAE.
“It’s very clear that MENA is a market that is highly engaged on Snap (and) highly engaged (with) content,” said Saad. “The changes that we’ve been making in the Discover feed are very obviously (in a market like this) making a big difference and that is exciting.”
MBC is launching its presence on Shows with five-minute versions of “Little Big Stars,” the Arabic- language edition of US variety series “Little Big Shots,” as well as “Scoop with Raya” and the Saudi-centric current affairs program “Ma’ali Al Muwatin.”
Tarek A-Qazzaz, MBC’s head of multi-platform network and social media, said the group would also be including a vertical camera on set during the production of a new drama, enabling MBC to have a Snapchat-ready version when it is broadcast next year. “We’re going to be experimenting,” said Al-Qazzaz, who said that MBC was headed toward platform agnosticism.
Jeddah-based Arabic entertainment network UTurn, which has hired an all-Saudi team to create videos just for Snapchat, will be running “Gharayeb Al Gharb” and “Abdullah W Bas,” while Discovery is to roll out culinary shows for its food and lifestyle channel Fatafeat.
“We now want to take it to the next level where we start working on original content and shows specifically for Snapchat,” said Kaswara Al-Khatib, chief executive of UTurn. “We’ve kept one thing consistent. We want to focus on video, because this is our strength, this is our turf, that’s what we know how to do.”
Although it’s a good start for Shows and for increased content in general, Saad said that much more Arabic content is required.
“Today, if you look at what’s happening in the Middle East, we have nine options for a user to consume professionally created Arabic language content in Discover,” he said. “We already have huge viewership and great numbers that we’re seeing on that. When we look at how content is consumed in other markets, I can tell you that MENA is very, very, very underserved. Underserved in every meaning of the word. We need so much more content … we need so much more breadth, and so much more depth of content.”