Amazon Ads SMB research: Middle East SMBs look to advertising to fuel future growth at home and internationally 

New research from Amazon Ads shows Middle East SMBs are benefiting from the positive impact of advertising as they look to expand both at home and internationally. The study found that nine in 10 (90%) said their current advertising strategy is successful in acquiring new customers, while almost nine in 10 (89%) said it had helped them to expand their Middle East business. Nine in 10 (90%) said advertising had helped them grow their business internationally within the last 12 months.

This confidence in advertising led four out of five (80%) of ME SMBs to increase their spend on advertising during the past year, while 8% kept their budget the same year-on-year. The most common motivations for this increase in spend include improving customer awareness of their brand (54%) or driving awareness of a new product or service (48%). The most popular channels for SMB spend in advertising include social media advertising (52%), followed by online search (43%) and sponsored products (38%). Looking ahead, just under half (44%) of those sampled said they planned to spend on streaming TV advertising during the next 12 months.

Of the 151 SMBs sampled, more than nine in 10 (93%) said they currently spend on advertising, compared to 7% that do not spend on advertising at all.

Despite the success enjoyed by some, not all SMBs feel they need advertising to grow their business. Seven percent of Middle East SMBs do not currently spend on any kind of advertising. When asked why they are not currently advertising, the most common response was that it is too expensive (70%), while nearly a third (30%) said evolving consumer behavior means it’s hard to reach their audience.

Even among SMBs that are currently spending on advertising, challenges remain. Almost four in 10 (36%) said their biggest challenge with advertising is knowing where to focus their advertising budgets to achieve their goals, while just over a quarter (28%) said they were unsure how to measure the performance of campaigns. Just under a third (32%) said creating compelling content was the greatest challenge their business faced when it came to advertising successfully.

“We see many SMBs testing the impact of advertising as part of their overall growth strategy and deciding if advertising provides the right return on investment to help them meet their business goals,” said Ludovic de Valon, Director, Global SMB Marketing, Amazon Ads. “Our aim is to make advertising as simple as possible for any SMB by removing the barriers, through a low cost of entry, closed-loop measurement, and the ability to surface their products to customers at scale.”

Looking to the future, there is a clear belief in the power of technology to enhance the impact of advertising among SMBs in the Middle East and to help them solve existing problems. Nearly three-quarters (70%) of Middle East-based SMBs said they believe AI will improve the performance of their advertising campaigns. As a result, just under half (46%) of those sampled are currently training their teams on how to use AI technology for advertising purposes.

“AI and machine learning have created a range of new possibilities for advertisers, and SMBs are already seizing this opportunity,” added Ludovic de Valon. “These technologies are democratizing the ability to advertise at scale and enabling small businesses to create compelling content that reaches relevant audiences in the right place and time.”