Global ad spend is up 50 percent on Facebook and Instagram in Q2, according to the recently released State of Social Media and CX report from Emplifi.
This ad spend increase came despite a 12.4 percent global drop in Facebook ad reach.
In the Middle East, the majority of brands’ relative ad spend went to Facebook feeds, which accounted for 53.4 percent of ad spending, while Instagram feed ads claimed 17.7 percent of the total ad spend, and Instagram stories represented 11 percent of ad spending, according to Emplifi’s Middle East report for Q2.
Retail brands were the most prominent in terms of interactions on brand pages on Facebook (23 percent), followed by telecom (16.7 percent) and airlines (13.5 percent).
Retail brand pages also boasted the highest number of Instagram interactions at 22.9 percent, followed by e-commerce at 21.4 percent.
“The ongoing increase in social media ad spend is proving to be more than just a pandemic-related ‘bounce-back’ scenario,” said Zarnaz Arlia, chief marketing officer at Emplifi. “More and more brands are relying on social media marketing to engage with their audiences meaningfully and at scale.”
She continued: “Social commerce and the formats which support it are also becoming more prevalent as the year goes on. As more brands recognise the value of live streaming and start to leverage more live content to cater to users at different stages of the customer journey.”
The report also indicated that H1 2021 has seen a plateauing of sponsored ad numbers, after an uptick in influencer marketing during H2 2020.
Live video content has proven to be much more effective in engaging social media users than traditional content, according to the report.
Zarnaz Arlia, chief marketing officer at Emplifi.
Facebook Live videos boasted the highest number of organic post interactions, engaging Facebook users three times more than standard videos. However, these Facebook live videos represent less than 1 percent of branded posts.
Instagram has continued to dominate Facebook in terms of profile engagement. What was already a significant gap in Q2 2020, with Instagram profiles gaining 4.4 times the interactions of Facebook profiles, has widened further. The Q2 2021 report showed that Instagram profiles are interacted with 6.35 times more than Facebook profiles.
This global trend was true of the Middle East region, as well. Instagram profiles have a 5.4 times higher engagement than Facebook profiles in the region, even though the Instagram audience is smaller.
Digital media represented almost 70 percent of the region’s $6.5 billion spent on advertising during the year 2020. This was largely due to the forced consumer switch to the virtual world after the dawn of the pandemic.
With this surge in digital media came a rising popularity in social media marketing. In March of this year, a report from RedSeer Consulting projected that social media ad spending would represent 32 percent of the $7.5 billion projected ad spend in 2021.
Live video content has proven to be much more effective in engaging social media users than traditional content.
“A strong and engaging social media presence will increasingly impact how brands operate and how well they perform, particularly in the Middle East, with its young, tech-savvy population who leverage social media for everything from shopping to socialising,” Arlia said. “As the growth of social commerce continues to rise, brands that leverage the opportunities social media presents to offer their customers interactive experience are more likely to win the hearts and minds of consumers and see a stronger impact on their business in the long-term.”
Of all brand pages on Facebook in the Middle East, the Qatar Airways page was the top Q2 performer with 3,197,457 interactions on 157 posts.
The brand page that gained the most traction on Instagram was Filimo’s, with 5,218,243 interactions on a total of 395 posts.
In the hospitality sector, Park Rotana Abu Dhabi was the top-performing Facebook profile with 215,199 interactions on 99 posts. On Instagram, Burj Al Arab boasted the highest number of interactions with 238,529 interactions on 28 posts.
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