What is setting off the Arab content creator market?

A maturing influencer economy driven by government policies is attracting a new wave of companies to the Middle East

The 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai attracted nearly 15,000 content creators and influencers. Antonie Robertson/The National

The combination of a maturing market, a young population and a push of government policies in the Middle East and North Africa is attracting a new wave of content creators and associated companies that are looking to monetise from the region.

Gurpreet Singh is one of them, a veteran in the fledgling global market since 2012, “even before the word creator economy was coined”, he says.

Mr Singh, who in 2006 spent nearly a year helping Dubai’s telecom service provider du monetise digital content of the time such as custom ringtones, wallpapers and Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) as a contractor, saw a ripe moment in the Middle East during a visit to the UAE a few years ago.

“We saw how this market is ready to erupt, how there are so many young content creators trying to get a hang of things,” Mr Singh says. “But at the same time, not many companies have a lot of experience working in building those content creators,” he tells The National.

This left an opening in the Middle East market for those who want to develop them, monetise, and be future leaders in the region's industry.

While many brands and agencies are already working with Middle East content creators to reach a wider viewership, “very few people are in the business of building those content creators” to reach a point where they build community trust and can influence their followers to action, Mr Singh adds.

Mr Singh, who cofounded one of Asia's largest digital creator and influencer agencies more than 12 years ago, One Digital Entertainment in Singapore, has helped build and manage up to 200 content creators primarily in India. Since entering the Middle East in 2023, he has partnered with about 15 to 20 creators.

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Middle East market

The region's demographics, recent investments and policy changes in the digital creator industry have boosted investment interest and the number of companies setting up in the region, particularly in Gulf countries.

This “youth quake” is what gives the Mena region an edge globally, says Jeff Nathenson, a digital publisher for the UK multimedia and e-commerce production house Why Now.

“Other parts of the world are facing a demographic challenge, where everyone's getting a lot older, and now we're in the region where actually young people are very much on the rise,” Mr Nathenson says.

Almost 60 per cent of the region's population is under the age of 30, according to Unicef's MENA Generation 2030 report. They are also heavily digitally connected, with Gulf countries occupying five out 10 spots on the World Bank's list of countries with the highest internet penetration.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar occupy the first four spots, respectively, all with 100 per cent penetration and with Kuwait at the sixth spot with 99.75 per cent.

This is coupled with government policies that are driving new economies. The UAE's 2021 National Strategy for the Cultural and Creative Industries is investing in infrastructure and businesses with the goal of having the sector contribute to 5 per cent of the country's gross domestic product by 2031.

Saudi Arabia launched a $1.1 billion investment initiative called the Saudi Ignite Program to raise the size of its digital content market through private sector participation and regulations to encourage innovation and investments. It was announced in 2022 in Riyadh at the launch of technology event LEAP.

“Governments [in the Gulf] understand the importance of building up an economy that has some real excitement and value to the young people,” says Mr Nathenson. That combination of social media tools along with the shift of government priorities in recent years “makes for a very, very interesting convergence”.

Regional struggles

Despite the momentum, the Mena region faces major obstacles in cultivating its digital creator industry, some of which are shared globally.

“The challenge that you face in Mena, like you would face in India or China or some of the other markets, where there's a large population but not perhaps as big a consumer infrastructure, is that traditional media valuations on CPM (cost per mille) basis are much lower,” says Mr Nathenson. CPM refers to how much advertisers are willing to pay per a thousand impressions.

It is more difficult for regional content creators to monetise from advertisers in comparison to their US or European advertisers, he adds. Instead, Mena content creators can rely more on sponsored and brand integrations.

There is also the issue of payment, as content creators worldwide face delays in receiving their due compensation given the more traditional and slower systems of payment the advertising industry uses. In addition, the US ban on TikTok enforced Sunday will now stifle the reach of millions of users from the region to Americans.

The overall creator economy, or influencer industry, is also still very small compared to the wider global entertainment industry valued at $2.83 trillion in 2023, according to PwC. Goldman Sachs reported that while the world's creator economy was a meagre $250 billion in comparison, it is expected to double in the next three to four years.

Investors and companies moving to the Middle East, or those already based in the region, hope that being early adopters will give them an advantage when the industry booms.

Shorooq, an alternative investment company based in Abu Dhabi, said last week that it will invest $9 million in two influencer and content creator ventures that participated in the one billion pitches competition at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai, which attracted nearly 15,000 content creators and influencers.

“We don't invest in anything that we don't believe will generate 10x for us,” Shorooq's co-founder and chief executive, Mahmoud Adi, who is scouting for a particular type of real impact influencer, said at the time.

Mr Adi said Shorooq's targets for investment are not big-hitting mainstream influencers but rather micro-influencers, or those with a social media following higher than the average person's but less than a celebrity's – generally between 1,000 and 100,000 followers.

“A macro-influencer or large influencer, they're good at driving a brand and brand awareness, but to help you in the decision of buying this product versus that product, actually micro-influencers usually have the highest engagement,” he said.

Measuring impact

Building a true influencer is just like a start-up, says Mr Singh. Major investments need to be made in the early stages, as a content creator can take three to five years before they start earning, he explains.

“That's a lot of investment going into their ecosystem,” which involves an agency spending money on education, studio recording costs, image training and living expenses so they don't have to obtain a job to focus on their craft, says Mr Singh. That is why a management agency can take anywhere from 15 to 50 per cent from the earnings of a creator in their later years, he adds.

Indian content creator Prajakta Koli is a client of One Digital Entertainment, who has more than 18 million followers across platforms.

Ms Koli, 31, who goes by the social media handle Mostlysane, made her first piece of content from her bedroom in 2015 about Valentine's singles. She has since then made multiple brand deals and become a paid actor working on three seasons of Netflix's romantic comedy Mismatched and soon Amazon Prime's supernatural thriller Andhera.

Her millions of supporters have also demonstrated their purchasing power as Ms Koli added author to her list of titles. The first-time writer's romance novel called Too Good to Be True reached the number one spot on Amazon's Top 5 anticipated reads of 2025, ranked according to the number of units sold on the platform.

Her doting fans bought enough books to propel her ahead of the likes of New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros, and seasoned motivational speaker Shiv Khera who has written more than 30 books – all before her book was ever released. Sahil Bloom, also a first-time author and content creator on investing, had his book The 5 Types of Wealth reach number two on the list.

“That's the community she has built” over the span of a decade, says Mr Singh, who is looking to do similar deals with other young creators in the Middle East.