Photo by David Rodrigo on Unsplash
Channel mix: Snapchat's premium-reach role
Most performance plans imported into the Gulf default to a Meta+Google split with Snapchat as a token line item. Snapchat's own GCC research, drawing on regional advertiser data, puts Snapchat at 14% higher ROI than other media categories despite receiving only 8% of total ad spend, while contributing roughly 10% of media-driven sales (Snapchat for Business, GCC ROI study, 2024-2025). Treated as mass-market it disappears; treated as a premium reach channel for under-35s, it pays.
Video and CTV close the gap Meta and Google leave open
Video is the second platform-level shift. YouTube reaches 94% of the UAE and 89% of Saudi Arabia, and 12 million users in Saudi Arabia alone access it through Connected TV (Google Think with Google, MENA Marketing Trends 2025). For hospitality specifically, 86% of Saudi viewers cite YouTube as their primary shopping guide during Ramadan (Google Think with Google, Ramadan 2026 Marketing Insights). The implication is that hospitality demand-gen plans which ignore CTV and YouTube during Ramadan are leaving the largest single intent surface untouched.
Ramadan moves the whole media day, not just the content mix
Ramadan reshapes the temporal profile entirely. 56% of MENA viewers stream more content during Ramadan than at any other time of the year, with 38% of digital activity and shopping decisions concentrated between 8 PM and 2 AM after evening prayers (Google Think with Google, 2026). Standard Western media flighting (Monday-Friday daytime) misses the high-intent window. Skift's 2025 MENA traveller research finds that travellers spend less on transportation and more on in-destination experiences, which sharpens the ad creative direction toward experience over price (Skift, 2025).
Language is platform-dependent, not universal
Language is platform-dependent, not universal. Arabic creative outperforms English on Snapchat and Twitter in the region; English outperforms on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google for the bilingual UAE audience (REU Ads, 2024-2025). Bilingual rotation tends to win for hospitality, where the booking decision is often made in Arabic but research happens in English. The default brief: Arabic-first on Snapchat and Twitter, English-default on Meta and Google, both versions for retargeting flights, all of it scheduled around the 8 PM to 2 AM Ramadan window when relevant. This is the mix behind the direct-booking results in our hospitality case studies.