Twitter announces key advertising platform for Mena

Despite its soaring user base in the region, sparked by the Arab Spring, the six-year-old firm has only been running larger global advertising campaigns for the past two years.

"We are excited to launch Twitter's Promoted Products in the Arab region," said Shailesh Rao, Twitter's Vice President of International Operations. "This is one of Twitter's fastest-growing regions, and where we continue to see users coming to Twitter to get closer to things they care about."


Watch the full interview with Rao here.

Connect Ads will manage sales and help develop regional market through education and training programs for agencies and large advertisers. The Egypt-based company will offer a suite of three Promoted Products to regional brand managers and marketers - Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends, which are currently available also in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Latin America.

"Twitter has selected Connect Ads as our official partner in the Arab region, where they will be an extension of Twitter's own sales team. This partnership is in line with our strategy which is now focused on building out our international presence," Rao continued.

The micro-blogging site has an active user base of 200 million people globally, sending 400 million tweets per day, and 5.5 million regular users in the Middle East alone - 40% of whom are in the UAE. The social network has tripled in size in Mena as a whole over the past year.

According to social media analysts Socialbakers, more than half of all Mena digital marketing budgets have increased accordingly, somewhere between 20-50% in the past few years, with social media marketing comprising 27% of the spend. This falls fractionally behind email marketing (28%) and ahead of Google Adwords (20%).

Connect Ads' Managing Director Mohamed El Mehairy explained to AMEinfo how they hope to 'educate and engage' advertisers: "We unveiled an education program a month and a half ago and have since been meeting with the top agencies and clients, making sure they understand the value of this transaction."

"We're also talking to a variety of industries to make sure we have a diverse portfolio and get the message around. Pretty much everyone is sold on 'why Twitter?' so it's mainly a case of explaining how to be a part of this [advertising opportunity]," El Mehairy continued.

Phase one of Twitter's ad tie-up will roll out in four key Mena markets, namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and the UAE - as well as Pakistan.

The growth of social media in Mena outstrips all other regions. Deloitte's Arab Media Outlook report said digital accounts for 4% of the total advertising spend in 2011. Digital advertising is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% over the next three years, generating about $580m across Mena by 2015.

Advertisers are now able to buy Promoted Products via this facility, as of yesterday.