Programmatic in Egypt

As technologies are developing and the Internet is spreading, many more customers switch to online. Spurred on by high Internet opportunities, users in Egypt are beginning to increase their time spending online, surfing social networks, scrolling sites and making a purchase online. As such, advertisers are looking for new ways to interact with their audiences, increasing their investment in digital advertising.

Digital Ads Market

Egypt is the largest and most strategic digital advertising market in the MENA region. With the highest number of internet users in the region, ad spending on digital advertising is growing and becoming more visible. So ad spending in the Digital Advertising market is projected to reach $819.30 million in 2022. Despite the projected decrease in digital ad spending in 2023, it’s expected to reach $952.80 million by 2027.

Source: Statista

Egyptian internet audiences are complex and consist of users across different socio-economic classes with different behavior and preferences. So to reach them in the most efficient way, Egyptian brands increase the use of programmatic technologies. Nowadays, programmatic ads account for 88% of Digital ads.

Source: Statista

Available audience

Egypt is one of the countries across the MENA region with a high internet penetration rate. There were 75.66 million internet users in January of 2022. It was equal to 71.9% of the total population. As internet proliferation continues to grow, so mobile phone usage for connecting to the Internet is growing. Data from DataReportal shows that there were 98.29 million cellular mobile connections at the start of 2022. It is about 93.4% of the total population.

Popularity of social networks is growing. There were 48.9% of social media users at the start of 2022. That number was increased by 5.0% between 2021 and 2022. Considering that 22.5% of users use social networks to find products to purchase, social media can be a good platform for brands for interacting with the target audiences and promoting brands’ products and services.

Source: DataReportal

Despite the number of social media users still growing, there is a large audience that can be reached by brands’ advertisements. So it makes sense for brands to take a look on social networks closer for promoting their products and services.

Source: DataReportal

Ad Formats

The market’s largest segment is Search Advertising with a market volume of $477.00 million in 2022.

Growing popularity of social media among Egyptians increases ad spending for advertising on social networks. It is the second market’s segment with a market volume of $216.90 million in 2022.

Source: Statista

Inventory

Top website ranking

google.com,  facebook.com,  youtube.com,  twitter.com,  instagram.com,  whatsapp.com,  youm7.com, google.com.eg, tiktok.com

Top Ad Network in Egypt

• MediaFem
• Airnow Media
• MGID

E-commerce market in Egypt

Egypt is the 39th largest market for e-commerce with a revenue of $7.74 billion in 2022. With a yearly growth rate of 19.43% between 2022 and 2025, Egypt is even expected to outperform the global average 6%. So it makes sense to develop an e-commerce strategy to offer products and services to the target audiences online.

Egyptians like online shopping.  41.3% of users purchase a product or services online at least one time a week. The main drivers to make online purchases and choose a store are free delivery, cash on delivery option, next day delivery, and coupons and discounts. Users buy a lot of products online, but most often they buy electronics, fashion goods, and food online. So Electronics & Media is the largest segment in Egypt and accounts for 26% of the e-commerce revenue.

Source: ecommerceDB

Social networks play a significant role in promoting e-commerce brands. 42.6% of Egyptians start researching brands on social media. Moreover, brands should pay more attention to advertising on social networks. It is one of the main sources of new brand discovery which can help not only increase brand awareness, but raise a profit as well.

Source: DataReportal

Market peculiarities

Egypt is one of the largest digital markets in the MENA region with a wide audience and opportunities for brands. However, there are some peculiarities needed to consider for successful ad campaigns. One of the features of the Egyptian digital market is the growing preference for local Arabic content. More than 60% of users prefer browsing in Arabic, 80% users watch TV in Arabic and so on. So brands should consider that to choose right language of advertisements for their target audiences.⁠