Outside the United States and Western Europe and parts of Asia, mobile advertisers are just beginning to find their legs. Smartphone sales are popping internationally, and that is beginning to create entire new industries and market segments to be sliced and diced for analysis. In particular, mobile usage is rising dramatically in the Middle East. How are people using their smartphones in the cradle of civilization?
In the United States, advertisers have been using data to digest consumer behavior for decades. With the rise of mobile, an entirely new platform that advertising could be sent to had to be investigated, and the data junkies have gone to work in various places. In the Middle East, an ad company called Plus7 (owned by Clique Media) surveyed several thousand people across seven countries in the region to determine how they are using their mobile devices to access news and information.
The survey included six countries from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Egypt. The six GCC countries included the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Many regions in these countries are extremely affluent, with wealth generated from oil production; these regions are ripe for mobile growth and the subsequent advertising that comes with it.
Some key takeaways from Plus7’s survey:
- The top uses of mobile in the Middle East were for access to news, information, social networks and email.
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