The document provides an analysis of Arabic fashion and beauty websites, including traffic trends, user demographics, and monetization strategies. Key points:
- Top female-focused sites like Nawa3em and Layalina generate much higher traffic than other titles from their publishers. Traffic to most sites declined slightly over the past 6 months.
- Sites attract significant traffic from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and North Africa. Female sites on average get over 50% of traffic from search and over 25% from social media.
- Bounce rates correlate with search traffic levels, suggesting content may not fully satisfy search intents. Popular search terms relate to celebrities, recipes, and lifestyle topics.
- Referral traffic
Brand experience Dream Center Peoria Presentation.pdf
Opportunities for brands advertising on Arabic Female Sites
1. A look at Arabic Fashion
and Beauty Sites
Opportunities for Publishers and Brands
May 02, 2017
Alexandra Tohme / @alextohme
2. CONTENTS
OLN Group Titles
7awi Group Titles
11 Female focused sites
Bounce Rate and Search Analysis
Referral Traffic
Homepage Layouts
Ad Design and User Journeys
Analysis
3. Methodology
I first looked at 2 main publishers OLN Group and 7awi Group who have a range of titles
covering female interests, male interests and social / funny videos and are very comparable.
From there I extracted just the female focused sites and added a few more titles from
different publishers to examine trends.
Using a 3rd party service I looked at traffic over the last 6 months, traffic channels and
country origin of traffic to understand trends and differences.
I then looked at site design, ad design and mapped user journeys to demonstrate how
brands and publishers could improve earnings.
Without access to the publishers direct analytics, obviously the numbers are not 100%
accurate, but the information is accurate enough to show trends
4. Sites looked at:
OLN GROUP Description 7AWI GROUP Description
oln.tv Social TV / Video ra2ej.com Social Buzz / Humor
nawa3em.com Fashion / Lifestyle Layalina.com Fashion / Lifestyle
gheir.com Fashion / Lifestyle 3oud.com Fashion / Lifestyle
chababs.com Male focused Alqiyady.com Male focused
ra2ed.com Male focused Arabsturbo.com Cars
Tv.koora.com Football Waseet.net Directory
Justfood.tv Food dalal.waseet.net Directory
Istibyani.com Survey
6. Nawa3em has an extraordinarily large amount of traffic compared to the others in the group, the
latter are currently averaging 150k per month as of March
Overall Traffic Oct 16 - Mar 17 OLN Group
7. All sites except the social tv platform (oln.tv) experienced a decline in traffic during the last 6 months,
October 2016 to March 2017.
Growth / Decline rates
8. The reach of OLN extends into North Africa, with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and of course Egypt driving significant traffic.
With the exception of the heavily trafficked Nawa3em, the majority of traffic for each comes from Saudi.
The UAE drives a smaller portion of visits, and interestingly only the male focused sites generate traffic from Kuwait and Qatar.
Overall, the country split for Nawa3em is more heterogeneous - unclear as to if this is a reason why traffic is so high compared to the
other sites.
Country origin of traffic
9. (using weighted averages)
Saudi attracts just over ⅓ of traffic at 36%, and the UAE and Egypt are about equal
North Africa together constitutes ⅕ of all traffic
Typical profile of an OLN site - by country
All North
Africa -
21%
10. The high performing oln.tv site gets the majority of its traffic from social channels, which is to be expected.
Nawa3em stands out for its higher share of search traffic compared to the others and the least amount from social. This
could be a possible reason why the site gets so much overall traffic if searches are being fulfilled on the site and it is of
high relevance to users.
A low portion of direct traffic across all sites may suggest that there is a majority of new users, rather than repeat ones
Traffic by Channel
11. (using weighted averages)
Just over half of the site traffic will come from Social networks, with another 37% from search. Direct traffic remains <10%
Typical profile of an OLN site - by traffic channel
13. Similar to OLN group, there is a clear outlier which has most of the traffic whilst the others are grouped closer together at
the lower end. And, similar to OLN group it is a female focused site, Layalina
The overall traffic by all 7awi sites is greater than OLN sites by a factor of 1.8x
(as at March 2017, OLN Group total traffic is 1.9mln, 7awi sites total traffic is 3.55mln)
Overall Traffic Oct 16 - Mar 17 7awi Group
14. All sites saw a dip in December, but Layalina has been growing steadily during Q1 this year.
The drop in traffic for 3oud is high because it seems that it was recently launched, or had a campaign that drove a lot of
traffic in Q4 2016, after which traffic died down.
15. Similar to OLN group, the 7awi sites also attract traffic from north africa, and from the GCC; Saudi and the UAE.
However, where OLN sites have Saudi as a majority traffic driver, 7awi sites generate 40% or more traffic from Egypt (with
the exception of 3oud which has Kuwait as the highest share of traffic at 47%)
16. (using weighted averages)
Egypt is responsible for just over ⅓ of traffic, with the UAE about half that at 15%. Saudi and Kuwait have 10%
All of North Africa is responsible for 42%
Typical profile of an 7awi site - by country
All North
Africa -
42%
17. Looking at the traffic by channel, the first thing I notice is there is more traffic being generated by Mail (purple bar) for these
sites compared to the OLN sites.
All of the sites have a higher share of Direct traffic compared to OLN group sites. 3oud in particular has >50% of Direct
traffic.
Social contributes 45% or more to the sites except for 3oud.com
18. (using weighted averages)
A typical 7awi site has traffic more evenly spread out amongst multiple channels, still with the majority (37%) coming from
social but with a much larger share of direct traffic and referrals and including some from email.
Typical profile of an 7awi site - by channel
19. OLN GROUP 7AWI GROUP
Comparing the split of traffic by country for “average sites” across the two groups:
● OLN generates more from Saudi and 7awi drives more from Egypt
● UAE traffic reaches 10 - 15%
● A typical 7awi site gets twice as much traffic from North Africa as a whole, compared to an OLN title
● More North African traffic can be responsible for the vastly higher absolute traffic numbers (perhaps)
All North
Africa -
42%
All North
Africa -
21%
20. OLN GROUP 7AWI GROUP
Comparing the split of traffic by channel for “average sites” across the two groups:
● OLN has a most of the traffic split between two channels only: social and search
● 7awi has a broader mix of traffic. Direct traffic is on average more than 2x that seen in OLN sites
● 7awi has 11.5% share of referral traffic compared to 1.5% in OLN sites.
● In fact nearly all sites in the 7awi portfolio are linked together driving traffic between each other, whereas this is not
seen in OLN sites
22. Sites included (n=11)
PUBLISHER TITLE
OLN Group nawa3em.com gheir.com
7awi Group layalina.com 3oud.com
Saudi Research and Marketing Group sayidaty.net aljamila.com hiamag.com
Diwanee yasmina.com 3a2ilati.com
Abu Dhabi Media anazahra.com
Dar al Hayat lahamag.com
To the female sites of OLN Group and 7awi Group, I added more from other
publishers to see if the observed trends expanded to other titles
23. ● With all 11 titles, the “leader” and subsequent “grouped” effect is diminished
● Sayidaty is the most trafficked site, 4.5mln per month as at March 2017 (SMRG group)
● Diwanee Group has its 2 sites in the top 4 driving traffic (3a2ilati and yasmina)
● Peaks for OLN group titles appeared in December, whereas peaks for 7awi titles occurred in Nov
● Most sites are picking up in March
Traffic to all female sites Oct ‘16 - Mar ‘17
24. Very small declines are seen in the top 2 sites that generate the most traffic, I interpret this to mean that despite
some volatility during the 6 month period, there is some stability with these titles.
The greatest growth is seen from Hiamag, folloId by lahamag, followed by yasmina and anazahra.
Growth / Decline rates
25. One can now see the importance of Egypt as a traffic generator across most of the sites.
Saudi is also a key source site, and the UAE plays a relatively small role in driving traffic with the exception of
3oud.com
There is also a “long tail” of traffic origin with a large number of sites having 30% or more originating from
“other” not analysed countries
Country origin of traffic
26. (using weighted averages)
The majority of traffic is being driven by the most populous countries, Egypt and Saudi
North Africa in total is responsible for 40% of all traffic.
All North
Africa -
40%
27. Overall, traffic arrives to these sites via Search and Social channels, with the exception of 3oud which appears
to have a very large portion of Direct traffic and referral.
Traffic by Channel all sites
28. Average traffic per channel for a typical arabic
female site
(using weighted averages)
● Just over half of all traffic comes through search, with just over one quarter from social.
● I might have expected slightly more than 12% coming from Direct channels
● Referrals are responsible for <5%
29. Typical profile of an arabic female site, looking at country and channel
All North
Africa -
40%
Traffic from
search - 52%
These figures combined suggest that there arabic speaking north african women in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia
are executing searches that are currently being fulfilled by arabic websites, based on keyword contained in the content.
One may have expected social channels to play an overall greater role, considering the relative lower cost to acquire
women on social in north africa vs the GCC.
It may also point to opportunities for advertisers themselves to reach consumers directly using branded and topic
keywords
31. BOUNCE RATES - IS THE CONTENT RELEVANT?
After trying to plot against many variables, the strongest correlation appeared to be against the search trends. As you
will notice the general trendline of bounce rate matches that of search.
This suggests that perhaps the content is not optimized for the search intent.
3oud has a very low percentage of traffic coming from search and the bounce rate is the lowest
Similarly, layalina has a low percentage of search traffic and a lowered bounce rate
Average
Bounce rate:
65%
32. Growth in site traffic vs Bounce Rates
70-75% bounce rates Growth 60 - 65% bounce rates Growth 30 - 40% bounce rate Growth
3a2ilati -1.56% sayidaty -1.06% aljamila 10.53%
lahamag 25.86% layalina 6.38% 3oud -61.11%
yasmina 16.00% nawa3em -24.24%
hiamag 64.29%
anazahra 15.38%
gheir -40.91%
One tends to see a bounce rate increase with increased traffic, particularly if there is a brand campaign rather than a
product specific one.
For the highest bounce rates seen here, several sites are indeed witnessing a positive growth in overall traffic, but it might
not be the right traffic.
33. So what are people searching for?
Having only limited access to the top handful of organic search terms leading to sites, they
fall into what may be expected for this type of content. Most of them are brand names
(variations of the name of the site) with celebrity or cooking related terms.
how to make brownies cooking today how to make custard orange cake cookies
arabs got talent dina sherbini amr diab
personality tests sex stories
amr diab latest news music artists
horoscopes nutrition in riyadh
interpretation of dreams your luck today leo daily horoscopes zodiac signs
dina sherbini mothers day amr diab International womens day watch series online
Celebrity couples Hair styles fashion education istanbul
34. Factors affecting search traffic: Search Malware
Out of the 11 sites in total reviewed, I couldn’t get data for Gheir, but 9 out of the remaining 10 had traffic
coming to them from browser malware “search dot mysearch dot com” and 5 out of the 10 had additional
traffic from a similar malware called govome4.
These are browser hijacking properties which appear to act as a legit search engine but are used to
modify Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox by assigning the new tab URL, homepage,
and default search engine browser settings to the mysearch or govome engines. Other packages are
installed behind the scenes to make it difficult to remove. Often users are taken to through these “search
engines” before landing on the desired sites. All browsing activity is monitored and sent back to the
hackers.
It is possible that this malware gets downloaded as a result of users downloading or pirating movies /
music.
Could this be the reason for the abnormally high amount of search traffic and potentially high bounce
rates?
36. The effect of Referral Traffic within Publisher sites
OLN Group sites did not really link to each other at all, compared to the 7awi sites which all drove
traffic to each other and Ire linked.
The benefits of publishers driving traffic across sites are:
● Increasing overall traffic by surfacing more content
● Building a more detailed audience profile as they move around
● Controlling more audience eyeballs
However, if the same audience is just circulating across titles, this may be misleading to
advertisers who may believe they are getting more new eyeballs than they actually are, and
potentially overpaying.
I assume that publishers in OLN and 7awi may price ad space at a premium on their “headline”
large traffic titles (Nawa3em and Layalina) and offer a discounted rate on supporting titles.
Having said this, an advertiser strategy with a multi title publisher should try to deepen the
relationship with the customer and move them further down the funnel.
37. The importance of MSN as a referrer
MSN
LAYALINA 3A2ILATI YASMINA
LAHA MAGAZINESAYIDATY
AL JAMILA
The first thing I notice is that MSN appears to be at the top of
the traffic driving tree when it comes to referral traffic. (although
it makes up a small fraction of traffic overall)
This flow chart shows how MSN drives traffic to all female sites
Also: MSN was a traffic
referrer to all of 7awi’s titles
(male and female)
38. The importance of MSN as a referrer
MSN
LAYALINA 3A2ILATI YASMINA
LAHA MAGAZINESAYIDATY
AL JAMILA
The first thing I notice is that MSN appears to be at the top of
the traffic driving tree when it comes to referral traffic. (although
it makes up a small fraction of traffic overall)
This flow chart shows how MSN drives traffic to all female sites
Also: MSN was a traffic
referrer to all of 7awi’s titles
(male and female)
51. Al Jamila
Ad takes you to Al
Jamila inside page,
where another ad
for Sayidaty Mall is
shown.
Ad now takes you
to directly to
Sayidaty mall
ecommerce site
54. Hia Mag
Hia advertises its own “boutique” (which is on
a subdomain of main site) but aggregates
other ecommerce stores, therefore acting as
an affiliate
55. Hia Mag boutique
From Hia Boutique
you can link out to
several shops via
each product
image
Mixture of english
and arabic stores
56. Anazahra
Arabic display ad
for audi leads to
brand landing page
in english
The Outnet ad,
displayed in
English and Arabic
leads to an english
site
59. SITE LAYOUT
Design wise, the sites all follow roughly the same format with a simple tiled
approach. The similarities can be advantageous as the target audience will feel
more familiar when consuming multiple titles.
However, this can also make it difficult for a user to precisely recall a brand, and
may lead to decreased loyalty. This hypothesis might be confirmed by the low
volume of direct traffic and the reliance on search. It is possible that where the
user currently gets their content from in this area is not as important as what the
news is.
60. AD FORMATS AND DESIGN
Given the large volume of traffic to the sites, one would have expected slightly
more adtech. There was a limited amount seen in pushdowns and video overlays,
but more interactivity does not necessarily add to the UX. And, depending on
bandwidth, it may slow loading times, such that the ad is not seen at all.
In some cases, ad units were overlapping, which detracts from the premium brand
being advertised (Mercedes) and the perception of the site. Many brands ran the
same banner in multiple locations on the same page.
What might be more engaging would be different parts of the rich ad running in
those units, or each of them forming part of a larger whole.
61. AD JOURNEYS AND LANGUAGES
Ideally, an arabic language ad would run in an arabic site, leading to an arabic
destination. In many cases this didn’t happen.
Whilst it can be argued that language capability correlates with socio economic
status (an audience that can buy premium brands would more likely be able to
consume content in both languages), and that the audience of these sites may
well be willing to flip between two languages; it does interrupt the overall user
journey not least because of the page layout jumping from RTL to LTR.
Any interruption in flow can ultimately lead to user drop off. For advertisers to get
maximum ROI, care should be taken to develop more arabic content if targeting
users on arabic language sites.
62. Publishers use of own ecommerce sites
Sayidaty.com has its own shopping platform, mall.sayidaty.com, and the site runs
several ads to drive traffic there. Ads on other sites from the same publisher (eg Al
Jamila) also eventually lead the user there.
Hiamag has taken a different approach with its “boutique” sitting on a subdomain,
rather than a standalone site.
It aggregates products from multiple vendors and when a user clicks on an item
they are taken to an external store. I couldn’t not get the amount of traffic to the
subdomain where the boutique is held, but some figures on the Sayidaty mall are
on the following slide.
63. Mall.sayidaty.net traffic figures
A peak of 500k in December dropping down to a
current 200k
Top Organic Search Terms leading to the site:
● Dammam Mall
● Hail Mall
● Tiffany
● Mothercare
● Marina Mall Bahrain
76% of traffic comes from search with
10% from referrals such as the main
sayidaty.net subdomains
Only 3% is from social channels.
64. AD DESTINATIONS
Awareness may be the name of the game here, given the traffic volume, but, user
journeys are still important and given the growth of ecommerce - will become
increasingly so.
On the next few pages you’ll see how the user journey can be optimized for the
advertiser:
65. Marli (Al Tayer)
Both Sayidaty and Gheir ran ads
for Al Tayer brands, leading to
the Al Tayer Group Brand page,
offering no further action.
The particular brands advertised
(David Yurman and Marli) are
also present on the Al Tayer
luxury ecommerce platform
Ounass.ae.
A potential missed opportunity to
drive to checkout.
Lead directly to the Al
Tayer owned Ounass
shopping site
Instead of leading
to this page...
66. Moulinex Instead of leading
to another content
page…..
And expecting the
user to continue the
journey….
Lead straight to
Souq to purchase!
If the final destination is a
potential purchase, you want to
make it as quick and easy as
possible. The use of the video on
the content site is detailed
enough to not have to go to an
informational brand page.
One thing Moulinex could do, is
use the API from Souq and
place it directly on the content
site, so publisher earns money
as an affiliate and brand
increases likelihood of purchase
67. Cavalli Instead of leading
to a category page
And expecting the
user to continue the
journey….
Lead straight to the
individual product
page
Cavalli does drive directly to
Wojooh but the user lands on a
category page and not directly
on the female product it is
advertising, requiring the user to
scroll down then click through to
an actual product page
Depending on its retailers,
Cavalli might want to compare
purchase stats by leading half
the traffic to Wojooh and half to
Sephora
68. Hugo Boss
It appears that the Hugo Boss ad
seen on a few mags is not
appearing through Adsense and
it is a direct buy, which makes
the final destination puzzling (the
uk Hugo Boss ecommerce site).
The distributor for Boss here
(BinHendi) doesn’t have any
ecommerce portals like Al
Futtaim or Al Tayer.
70. The Brand, Distributor, Publisher relationship
Brand UAE Distributor
Moulinex Al Khayyat
Investments
Hugo Boss BinHendi
Marli Al Tayer
Distributor usually
responsible for retail
operations
Brand usually
responsible for
advertising and
marketing activities
Media Agency
Publishers Stores
71. The Brand, Distributor, Publisher + ecom
relationship
Brand UAE Distributor
Moulinex Al Khayyat
Investments
Hugo Boss BinHendi
Marli Al Tayer
Distributor usually
responsible for retail
operations
Brand usually
responsible for
advertising and
marketing activities
Media Agency
Publishers Stores
ECOM
Stores
Who’s
responsible for
these though?
72. Threats to the ad model
Brand UAE Distributor
Moulinex Al Khayyat
Investments
Hugo Boss BinHendi
Marli Al Tayer
Brand usually
responsible for
advertising and
marketing activities
Media Agency
Publishers
Stores
Distributors who hold
multiple brands might
decide to take all the
publisher ad space to
drive to their products /
stores
73. Threats to the ad model
Brand UAE Distributor
Moulinex Al Khayyat
Investments
Hugo Boss BinHendi
Marli Al Tayer
Media Agency
Publishers
Brands and distributors
could be in competition
for the same space,
artificially driving the
price of ad space up.
75. Possible solutions for Brands:
UAE Distributor E-
Stores
3rd party Ecom
sites
Ounass (Al Tayer) Souq
Wojooh
(Chalhoub Group)
JadoPado
TaqTaq
Wojooh
Sephora
Brands should map
out the full
landscape of where
a customer could
purchase online, try
and expand
platforms….
...Run multiple ads
leading to varied
destinations to test
out which converts
better
76. Possible solutions for Brands:
E-Stores Affiliate model
Ounass (Al Tayer) Eg no
Wojooh
(Chalhoub Group)
Eg no
Souq Eg yes
JadoPado Eg yes
TaqTaq Eg no
Sephora Eg no
Wojooh Eg yes
If your high
performing platform
has an API or the
ability to plug into
an affiliate network,
prioritize these...
...Buy directly with
publisher, install
affiliate token /
widget so publisher
also earns. This
way you mitigate a
bidding war with
others for ad space
77. Possible solutions for Publishers:
1. If the online points of
purchase for your
advertising clients is more
GCC based - start to grow
audience in those countries
away from North Africa
2. Investigate which ecommerce
platforms have affiliate
programs and start preparing for
integration. This way you can
sell directly to advertisers
without a middle man
3. Consider increasing the
content to cover custom
pages and articles for large
distributors who have multiple
product lines. Start offering
multimedia content
Better
targeted
audience
Future
Proof
yourself
Grow
content
range
