The Saudi Digital Advertising Maturity Framework, launched by Snap and Kearney, indicates an eight-percentage-point gap between digital ad spending growth and e-commerce growth in the Kingdom, highlighting an opportunity to enhance investment efficiency and link it more clearly to measurable business outcomes.

This gap does not provide a sole explanation for market performance, as e-commerce is influenced by multiple factors including the nature of each sector, evolving consumer behavior, and the distribution of purchases between digital and traditional channels. According to Abdullah Al-Hammadi, Managing Director of Snap in Saudi Arabia, this reflects the market's transition from a phase of digital expansion to a more advanced phase focused on effectiveness and measurement.

Al-Hammadi said during a special interview with Asharq Al-Awsat: 'Higher spending alone does not automatically lead to stronger business outcomes,' explaining that the challenge is no longer limited to reaching the audience but is now linked to organizations' ability to connect strategy, content, consumer journey activation, data, and measurement within a single ecosystem.

Abdullah Al-Hammadi, Managing Director of Snap in Saudi Arabia (Snap)

Effectiveness Phase

Snap and Kearney developed the Saudi Digital Advertising Maturity Framework to help organizations assess their ability to convert advertising investment into measurable business outcomes, rather than looking at spending volume in isolation from other marketing elements.

The framework is based on four pillars: Strategy, Creativity, Localization, Consumer Journey Activation, Data, and Measurement. It does not assume that excellence in one pillar compensates for weakness in others, but rather focuses on how interconnected they are from the planning stage to the final campaign impact assessment.

Al-Hammadi points out that the goal is not to slow digital investment growth but to improve its efficiency, explaining: 'Saudi Arabia already has the digital infrastructure, consumer engagement, and growth momentum. The next opportunity is to ensure that advertisers have the maturity, local relevance, and measurement discipline needed to turn this momentum into sustainable business results.'

This means the market does not face a problem in reaching audiences so much as a challenge in determining whether that reach led to a change in awareness, interest, purchase intent, engagement, or sales.

Varying Levels

Not all advertisers in Saudi Arabia start from the same point. Major local companies typically have resources, teams, and data that differ from those available to small and medium enterprises, while global brands entering the market face challenges related to understanding the local audience. Government entities also have different needs from startups or e-commerce platforms.

Therefore, the framework does not classify a single pillar as the weakest for all advertisers. One organization may have a clear strategy but suffer from measurement shortcomings, while another succeeds in producing locally relevant content without having a data structure that demonstrates its commercial impact.

Nevertheless, Al-Hammadi identifies two areas with clear room for improvement: consumer journey activation across all stages and integrated measurement. He says some organizations are still building capabilities in data, talent, and measurement tools needed to understand the real impact beyond campaign performance itself.

This is becoming increasingly important as the role of digital platforms expands across stages of discovery, consideration, conversion to purchase, and subsequent interaction, rather than being limited to generating brand awareness.

According to Snap, the Saudi digital advertising market is shifting from focusing on spending expansion to measuring effectiveness and commercial return (Reuters)

Interconnected System

Limited campaign results are usually not due to a single isolatable mistake. The content may be good, but the business objective is unclear, or the campaign is widely distributed without linking to consumer journey stages, or there is plenty of data that is not used to determine what actually drove the result.

Al-Hammadi notes that 'campaigns are more capable of achieving business results when strategy, creativity, activation, and measurement work together from the start.' However, when these functions operate in separate departments, the organization may achieve high numbers in reach, views, or engagement, but finds it difficult to determine each element's contribution to the final result or what should be scaled in subsequent campaigns.

This approach requires measurement to begin before campaign launch, by defining the desired outcome, appropriate indicators, and the data needed to evaluate them. This transforms marketing from an activity based on sporadic campaigns into a continuous system where creative, technical, and commercial decisions are connected.

Local Relevance

Research results indicate that more than 30% of Saudi consumers find that advertisements lack cultural relevance. This result does not mean that Saudi brands are ignorant of their market, but rather reflects the rapid change in audience expectations and their ability to recognize generic messages or those transferred from other markets.

Al-Hammadi explains that 'cultural relevance today goes beyond Arabic text or local images,' as it extends to the creative idea, language usage, choice of content creators, platform experience, timing of brand presence, and the way audience interaction is measured.

Actual localization is not achieved by translating a global ad after its design is complete, but by incorporating an understanding of the Saudi market from the strategy stage. This includes the nature of communication, differences between age groups, cultural and social moments, the platforms each audience uses, and what is considered natural or artificial in advertising discourse. Al-Hammadi continues: 'When relevance is designed across the entire marketing system, the work appears more natural to the Saudi audience and is more capable of converting into stronger business results.'

Cultural relevance is a key factor and goes beyond using Arabic language and local images to designing the campaign from the start (Getty)

Cross-Channel

Some traditional measurement models rely on attributing credit to the last channel before purchase, but consumer behavior is usually not linear. The consumer may discover a product through a social platform, then search for it, watch reviews, visit a store or app before making a decision later.

According to Kantar's cross-media analysis in Saudi Arabia for 2025, approximately 70% of platform-driven impact in some cases came from interaction between multiple channels, not from a single platform's isolated performance. This percentage does not mean every campaign achieves the same result, but it shows that a large part of the impact may result from the way channels support each other.

The meaning of 'impact' varies by campaign objective; it may include increased awareness, interest, or purchase intent, or it may manifest as engagement, site/app activity, leads, or purchases. Therefore, evaluating each platform independently may undervalue early interactions that contributed to shaping the decision, even if it was not the channel that recorded the final conversion.

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