Saudi Arabia as Your New eCommerce Destination: GEO Overview, Stats, and Tips

What if there were a dream GEO for your eCommerce campaigns? Where almost everyone is online, nearly the entire population uses social media, and a huge audience share is young, digitally savvy, and ready to spend? 

Yes, the market has its own specifics, but that doesn’t mean it’s too hard to enter. In this article, we break down everything you need to know to try out SA as your new eCommerce hub.

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Saudi Arabia: Quick Overview

Why is Saudi Arabia so valuable a GEO for those who run e-commerce? 

For many, Saudi is still associated with rich sheikhs, luxury cars, and gold. Yes, all of that exists there, and the country does have a very wealthy elite and higher income levels compared with many regions. That said, most of the population consists of everyday young people, middle-class workers, office professionals, and entrepreneurs. 

So the real value of this GEO isn’t in gold, but in its digital reach:

Quick note: more than 50% of the population prefers the click-and-mortar format. It’s when users browse products online and complete the purchase in-store. According to the research, Saudi Arabia has a higher share of such consumers than any other country surveyed, including the US and the UK. It means purchase decisions are still made online, even if the transaction happens offline.

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When is The Best Time To Try?

In short: any. It turns out this GEO is almost evergreen. Why?

According to our stats, traffic and sales in Q1 grew by 28% compared to Q4. This was surprising: traditionally, Q4 is the peak season as it includes many major sales events and the highest annual ad budgets.

Here are the top growth dates (by impressions increase):

Date	Impressions	Conversion Growth (%)
2026-02-04	9M	+12.6%
2026-02-05	11M	+39.4%
2026-02-02	12M	+44.5%
2026-01-30	14M	+9.2%
2026-01-29	10M	+26.1%
2026-01-28	10M	+38.6%
2026-01-27	9M	+44.0%
2026-01-26	10M	+47.6%
2026-01-25	10M	+26.3%
2026-01-24	10M	+13.2%
2026-01-23	9M	+21.4%
2026-01-22	9M	-11.6%
2026-01-21	8M	+70.3%
2026-01-20	8M	+83.1%
2026-01-19	7M	+19.9%
2026-01-18	8M	+19.6%
2026-01-17	7M	+18.4%
2026-01-15	6M	+5.5%
2026-01-14	7M	+24.5%

All these dates are beyond the biggest sales and promo periods, and it kinda proves Saudi can deliver results year-round.

Here’s the overall growth by individual buyers – we compared the period 01.01-08.02.2026 to 30.09-07.11.2025:

Impressions	Conversion Growth (%)
115M	+49.2%
28M	+96.8%
15M	+63.0%

So, while holiday seasons can boost your CR, you can safely test Saudi Arabia at any time of the year.

If you still want to tie your first Saudi campaign to some important date, here is more good news for you. According to Google’s report, Saudis have become more interested in international holidays. For example, the search interest has grown around Halloween. So, you shouldn’t miss them out, and run your campaigns just like you’d do for the USA or European GEOs.

And here are several of the most important local holidays for Saudis:

• Ramadan (moves annually, ~March–April). Ramadan is the most crucial religious month in Islam and one of the strongest commercial periods in Saudi Arabia. People spend more time online, especially at night, so their shopping activity also increases.

• Eid al-Fitr. (right after Ramadan). This is a major celebration marking the end of Ramadan. On Eid day, Muslims attend a special prayer, wear their best clothes, share festive meals, visit family and friends, and exchange gifts.

• Eid al-Adha. (approximately 70 days after Eid al-Fitr). Another big Islamic holiday focused on family and charity, when people visit family and friends, and congratulate each other. This also leads to increased spending on fashion, gifts, and travel.

• Saudi National Day. (September 23). This is a national holiday celebrating the founding of Saudi Arabia. Many brands run themed promotions and limited-time discounts during this period.

• White Friday (late November). This Middle East version of Black Friday is one of the biggest eCommerce periods with massive discounts across all major niches.

• Riyadh Season. (October-March). A large entertainment and sports festival in Riyadh. Being an offline event, it still increases the overall consumer activity.

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Which eCommerce Offers to Promote in Saudi?

This part is quick and easy: we have the ultimate statistics that can help:

If you want to narrow your targeting, here are the most popular online shopping categories in Saudi Arabia, according to the Ipsos Spotlight KSA report:

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How to Set Your Campaign for Saudi Arabia 

Overall, the setup principles are similar to any eCommerce campaign. Still, here are a few extra tips from our experts for the Saudi market:

These tips give you a starting point for launching in the Saudi market. But in the end, everything depends on how you test, optimize, and scale your campaigns. To show how this works in real life, let’s look at one of our recent SA case studies.

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Case study: How to scale with a multiformat strategy

During the quarter, our partner launched 5 campaigns progressively. Each had its specific role in the whole strategy:

• RON (Run of Network) campaign on Onclick. This campaign doesn’t contain any whitelists, so its goal is to test all available zones across the network and identify the top-performing sources. 

	Impressions
RoN campaign-Onclick	1,5 ML

• Whitelist campaign on CPA. Based on the RoN campaign results, our partner launched a whitelist campaign to concentrate the budget exclusively on the most efficient segments.

	Impressions
RoN campaign-WL	3,8 ML

In parallel, the partner tested three other formats:

• Telegram Ads campaign
• Direct Click campaign
• Social campaign
  

All three showed strong performance under sCPC and sCPM models, and helped diversify traffic sources, increasing the overall volume. Here is the total result of the 5 campaigns so far:

	Impressions
Total	8,8 ML

As a result of the scaling, the campaign gained 1460 conversions more than it’d received in Q4. This once again proves that Saudi Arabia can deliver stable performance and show growth even beyond the biggest festive dates.

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Which Creatives to Use?

As you’ve seen in the previous part, the most commonly used format is Onclick, so you might not need any creatives at all. Even pre-landers are not widely used for Saudi Arabian campaigns, so here is simply what a user might see:

If you prefer more complicated funnels or want to test Push Noticiations and other creative-based formats, here are a couple of tips. Your creatives should be:

• Discount-focused. According to research, 72–78% Saudi customers are actively looking for discounts, so your creatives might work better if you make an emphasis on some big promos and valuable deals.

• Localized. According to another research among Saudi youth, 81% of surveyed people prefer brands that align with their cultural values. That’s why you should test showing cultural codes and local people on creatives. 

• Mobile-friendly. Since most users will see your ad on a smartphone, make sure your landing page or creative is well-optimized for mobile screens.

• Modest. Any kind of sexualized creatives can lower user trust – and thus performance.

• Automated if you want. PropellerAds autocreatives perfectly work with SA Push campaigns, so you can save your time and dive right into the testing with the ready-made options like these:

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To Sum It Up

Saudi Arabia is not only about luxury goods – familiar eCommerce brands convert here perfectly. It’s a young, mobile-first market with young users who actively look for deals and shop online year-round. With the right offer and approach, you can absolutely nail it, and we’ll be happy to help you do that.