AdCombo has opened totally new offers in Jordan, Lebanon and UAE! No other network has such offers in these GEOs and you all know what that means – no competition. In addition, they were absolutely private and almost no one ran it yet! So we are glad to say it is a really new market with fresh traffic and there is a new audience that is starved for new content and eye-catching ads 😉
Since we have promised you tips and lifehacks on those GEOs, now we are going to tell you more about these regions.

And we begin with the United Arab Emirates (UAE, Emirates).

The majority of the population in the country are expatriates from other countries so no surprise they use both Arabic and English versions of the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) – .ae (English) and .امارات (Arabic).
And speaking of the popular things – we made a list of the 5 most visited websites in the UAE:

• Facebook
• Google
• Google.ae
• YouTube
• Yahoo!

As you can see the majority of these websites aren’t regional websites but global websites with a regional presence.
And what about top 5 regional websites? Let’s see:

• Google.ae
• Dubizzle.com
• Souq.com
• Gulf News
• Kooora

News, sport and shop resources – this is what the Arabs are interested in. Also, you may have noticed that they use regional Google site, not a global one.
But despite this, both English and Arabic are used in the UAE. Depending on the specific product you are promoting in the region it’s important to do your keyword research thoroughly in order to utilize your and efforts most effectively.

Also, a couple of insights for you: “UAE” as a keyword has much higher exact match search traffic than “United Arab Emirates” (obviously because it is much easier to type). Another important thing you should know is that the keyword “Dubai” has about 10 times more traffic than the country name (any of the versions).

And now let’s get to our favorite part, we are going to talk about social media.
In the UAE, as in most countries, social networks are becoming a central part of daily life. And, of course, no surprise that Facebook is a leader with 3.4 million UAE users. But then surprisingly goes Linkedin with more than a million users. And the third place is Twitter – 305K active tweeters.

What can we say about mobile marketing there? Go and explore it!
Mobile marketing is one of the most (if not the most) rapidly growing online channels in the UAE. Smartphone usage continues to grow and the country has the lowest cell phone usage cost (out of any Middle East country). Some lower class members of society may not even have regular access to a PC making their smartphone their sole gateway to the Internet. So using mobile banner ads may be a really good idea for your profit 😉

Moving on – Lebanon 🙂

Lebanon (as well as Jordan we will talk about a bit later) is not such an advanced country as UAE when it comes to affiliate marketing and digital marketing in general. Regardless, Lebanon hosts an increasingly tech-savvy population of over 6 million, with a wide-open Internet-ready for digital marketers to make a profit from.

But back to the overview. The ability to target the right consumers for your product efficiently and intelligently depends on a good understanding of the motives, background, and culture of that audience (we hope it’s not news). So let’s quickly see what background this country has.

Lebanon has 6 million people, 95% is Arab and, what is way more important, 40% of the population is Christian. This actually makes Lebanon the country with the greatest amount of Christians in the Middle East. This information can be very useful to publishers both in terms of targeting their Lebanese audience respectfully, and also for the creation of various seasonal ads and promotions.

The official language is Arabic and French is used as the second language. Knowledge of English says about high levels of education.
Lebanon uses only one ccTLD – .lb .

Let’s see what sites they visit most often:

• Google.com.lb
• Facebook.com
• Google.com
• Youtube.com
• Live.com

The same situation as the UAE has – the majority of the list aligns to internationally popular websites such as Google and Facebook. Then let’s see top 5 regional websites:

• Google.com.lb
• Aljaras.com
• Bintjbeil.org
• Greenarea.me
• Saidaonline.com

Way more interesting, right? Apart from Google.com.lb and Greenarea.me, the sites focus on either entertainment news in the Middle East or on Lebanese current events. It is logical to assume, that there is a high level of interest across the Lebanese population on modern developments, entertainment, and information. Use this trend to target your ads more effectively 😉

Social media and networks. There is no need to say that Facebook holds the first place but it takes the lion’s share of the market – 80.4% of the Lebanon population use the Internet and nearly 78% of that 80.4% use Facebook! Impressive, don’t you agree? Second place is for Twitter and then goes Linkedin.
By the way, Facebook boasts approximately 95.2% of the social media traffic on mobile, with Twitter earning 3% and all other sites (such as Google+, Tumblr, and YouTube) receiving other amounts of traffic.

Speaking of mobile traffic – Lebanon has been lauded as the country in the Middle East that is most quickly going mobile. It was around 25% penetration in 2006 and now it’s about 89-90%!

There is a lot of opportunities for affiliates to make a profit in Lebanon, with the country’s low competition and rising interest in mobile search and online exploration. All you need is be patient and research the local market as thoroughly as you can.

And the last but not less important – Jordan.

Begin with the basic information. Affiliates that are looking for an audience in Jordan should make their ad campaigns bearing in mind the young age of the country and population (about 42.2% is under 15 years old), large Muslim majority in the state and the emerging economy of the country, with the official unemployment rate 13% and the unofficial rate estimated at 30%.

The official language is Arabic, English is a common second language among the middle and upper classes of society. So, publishers that are hoping for high visibility on their ads should focus on creating relevant keywords and ads written in the Arabic language with Arabic characters, with a lesser focus on English.
As well as Lebanon, Jordan has only ccTLD – .jo.

Moving on. The 5 most popular global websites are almost the same as the UAE and Lebanon have. So, it’s more interesting to see the top 10:

• Google.jo
• Facebook.com
• Youtube.com
• Google.com
• Garaanews.com
• Alwakeelnews.com
• Sarayanews.com
• Ammonnews.net
• Alkawnnews.com

The most notable thing about this list is the high prevalence of news websites among the top visited sites there. Jordan is a bit of an anomaly in this way, as most countries typically have more social media pages and search engines (such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Bing) featuring in their top 10 listing.
You should use this insight to focus your advertisements toward a curious and knowledgeable group with a high interest in the future of their country.

Due to the high Internet and smartphone penetration, Jordanians are very active on social networking sites – 84% of Jordanians use social websites such as Facebook and Twitter with 28% accessing these sites on their phones.
Jordan has the greatest preference towards Facebook in the Middle East but also shows high loyalty to Twitter – with 63% of the country subscribed and checking the site daily – take that into account.

For a country with such a high rate of smartphone and Internet penetration, Jordan’s mobile market seems lacking. Most likely, the largest barrier to a thriving mobile market is the heavy taxation levied on mobile services.
And while competition for the mobile market is currently low in Jordan, the current state of taxes and the economy may mean that the market will not prosper in the future and mobile ads is not really a good idea yet.
So, affiliates may find great success running advertisements in Jordan due to the country’s low competition rates in PPC advertising, high Internet penetration rate, and young and increasingly technical population.

In conclusion of the overviews above, we can say that there are enough weighty reasons to explore this market now. People are only starting to learn this part of advertising. Hooks and tips that don’t work anymore for popular GEOs are totally new and interesting for this audience.

Stay tuned and don’t miss more tips 😉