Photo by David Rodrigo on Unsplash
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 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 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. 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.