YouTube shines throughout the year as the country, and most of the world’s, top online video platform, but here in Egypt and MENA, it gets an extra boost during Ramadan.
Ramadan ads are no joke, being the Superbowl season of MENA, with brands spending almost all year in preparation for the giant boost in viewership and sales during the holy month. Every year, brands and agencies use analytics and data from the platform in order to prepare for next year’s round of advertising, while consumers rewatch their favorite ads of the year.
In an exclusive with Think Marketing, Google shares their top 10 ads on YouTube Egypt of 2018 to help marketers learn from last year’s most popular ads. It will not shock anyone that a majority of the ads are from 2018’s Ramadan season.
The internet giant creates the list based on viewership, searches and most trending queries during 2018. According to the report, “The YouTube Ads Leaderboard celebrates the top ads on our platform each month. Ads are determined by an algorithm that factors in metrics like views, watch time, shares, and audience retention (amount of video watched).”
The Big 10
2018’s biggest Egyptian ads on YouTube, in no particular order are
- Vodafone’s Charge and Spark (Sha7na W Shabr2a)
- The Stars of Ramadan by Vodafone
- Neighbors by Orange
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- Etisalat’s Strongest Card in Egypt (A2wa Kart Fi Masr), full song
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- Oh Summer by Orange
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- Orange’s Al-Laly for Orange Dolphin
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- Etisalat’s Strongest Card in Egypt, Ad Version
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- La2 La2 by Orange
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- You Can (Enta Te2dar) by Banque Misr
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- Unfair Internet (El Net Zalem) by Vodafone
Looking Deeper
As always, we can see that the 3 major Telecoms of Egypt continue to have the most rewatched and trending ads.
According to the report, “Ramadan ads are so popular in Egypt that viewers proactively search for them on YouTube. Independent research even shows that Ramadan audiences prefer YouTube ads to TV clutter in Egypt, according to Ipsos MENA Ramadan Insights 2017. So it’s no surprise that some of the most creative, popular ads of the year centered around the holy month, including Vodafone Egypt and Banque Misr’s Ramadan campaigns.”
It is definitely no surprise that Orange’s Neighbors ad made it on the list, not only was it one of the first Ramadan 2018 ads to reach 1 million views, it was also the highest ranking telecom ad on YouTube.
We also see that Orange controls the local YouTube audience in terms of binge-watching ads, being the only brand to have 4 separate ads on the list.
What we don’t see is Telecom Egypt’s first run at Ramadan in 2018 as WE. The young telecom brand released several ads during Ramadan and the coinciding FIFA World Cup. The brand is still young however, and is produced some great ads during the season. We may see them in next year’s list.
Banque Misr’s You Can and Orange’s Neighbors are also the only ads that were last year’s Lantern Awards finalists that made it onto this list.
A main theme we can see in all of the ads however are that all of them are focused on songs, and not necessarily on just the music itself. One of the biggest trends of 2018’s Ramadan was actually “simple beats and a focus on lyrics,” you can read more about it on our Ramadan 2018 Trend Report.
We also see telecom brands’ love for celebrity marketing, with 9/10 ads featuring either one or several celebrities, although Banque Misr’s song was a collaboration between two popular artists.
Some of you might have noticed that Etisalat’s “Strongest Card in Egypt” appears twice on the list, the service provider claims two spots with its original ad and its full-length song.
What did you think of 2018’s top 10 ads on YouTube? Which was your favorite?