Twitter Audience Platform debuts in Saudi Arabia for local advertisers

For the first time, online news and social networking site Twitter is now officially offering one of its existing advertising products in Saudi Arabia.

With the debut of Twitter Audience Platform in Saudi Arabia, local advertisers will be able to take ads that are already running on the social networking site and display them on Twitter’s extensive publisher network, which is made up of thousands of apps.

“Advertisers that target audiences in Saudi Arabia will be able to extend their campaigns beyond user timelines on Twitter to the thousands of apps that their audiences use every day through the Twitter Audience Platform,” said Benjamin Ampen, managing director at Twitter MENA.

For the Twitter Audience Platform, the site will be using a network of apps through a mobile advertising start-up that it acquired six years ago, MoPub.

MoPub has a mobile advertising exchange and helps companies automate the management of various ad networks.

“The apps on the network have ad inventory. So if you are any big or a small business in Saudi Arabia, on top of putting ads ‘on platform’, the firm can activate an extra reach to put the ads on all the apps that are a part of the network,” Ampen said.

With an internet penetration rate of 91 percent internet, Saudi Arabia is a key market for social networking sites. The Kingdom has 25 million active social media accounts. Twitter is the fourth most active platform in the Kingdom with 17.29 million users, according to data from Global Media Insight. The top 3 are YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, respectively.

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“With Saudi Arabia being a key market for advertisers in the region, advertisers targeting audiences in this market will be able to drive greater scale for their campaigns through the Twitter Audience Platform, as they will have enhanced reach and performance,” Ampen told Argaam.

Write to Paromita Dey at paromita.d@argaamplus.com