Recent data reveals that classifieds ads are migrating to the Internet. The number of printed classifieds ads in MENA is shrinking, while Arabic language online classifieds websites are booming. The shift to online classifieds has improved the experience of consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer selling and buying. It also created billions of dollars in value for start-up founders and their investors. Globally, online classifieds is a business that is mostly local or regional, where global websites are usually of low value outside their geographical area. For this reason, the region’s homegrown online classifieds companies have high growth potentials.

1. 1 www.arabbusinessreview.com
The Surge in Online Classifieds
 Recent data reveals that classifieds ads are migrating to the Internet. The
number of printed classifieds ads in MENA is shrinking, while Arabic
language online classifieds websites are booming.
 The shift to online classifieds has improved the experience of consumer-to-consumer
and business-to-consumer selling and buying. It also created
billions of dollars in value for start-up founders and their investors.
 Globally, online classifieds is a business that is mostly local or regional,
where global websites are usually of low value outside their geographical
area. For this reason, the region’s homegrown online classifieds companies
have high growth potentials.
If you like to get your hands dirty with an inky, fat and heavy print classifieds newspaper made
out of dead trees on a Friday or Saturday morning, and circle classifieds that are of interest
using that bold red pen, over a cup of coffee, then you must have noticed that the number of
classified ads has shrunk. This is especially true in the autos and real-estate segments, as the

2. 2 www.arabbusinessreview.com
volume of ads has fallen over the past couple of years and even more so during the last 12
months.
Where did the classified advertisements go? You won’t have to look far. Just pick up your
computer or smart device, do a quick search, or download a regional classifieds app, and you’ll
find all you’ve missed and much more.
Between 2000 and 2010, US newspaper classifieds revenue fell from $19.6 billion to less than
$6 billion. In fact, today most cities in the US don’t have a classifieds print newspaper.
Europe did not need long to follow. A couple of years ago, France’s most iconic classifieds paper
–which was the inspiration behind many of the classifieds prints in the Middle East– decided to
stop printing. While we are yet to see leading classifieds newspapers in the region shut down,
it’s easy to predict that this may happen in less than 5 years.
A look into the regional print classifieds industry reveals that business from classifieds listings
has stopped growing 2 or 3 years ago, while most titles have witnessed 20 to 30 percent decline
in revenues and volume of ads last year. This year seems to be following suit.
While this may be bad news for publishers who made a bet on print classifieds, and set a blind
eye to the obvious shift to online classifieds, the migration of classified advertising to the
Internet has been a win-win for all. This includes consumers, small and medium-sized
companies, and online classifieds start-ups and their investors. The shift drastically improved
the experience of consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer selling and buying. It also
created billions of dollars in value for start-up founders and their investors around the world,
which made-up -multiple times- for the lost value in print classifieds. Despite starting mostly
with a free offering, online classifieds have been able to prove their success in monetizing users

3. 3 www.arabbusinessreview.com
infinitely more than print classifieds, in a far more scalable manner, and with much higher
margins.
It is not an exaggeration that more than 50 percent of the 135 million Internet users in the Arab
world rarely use a print classifieds newspaper. From a seller or service provider’s perspective,
one can get immediate gratification and results by posting ads for free, or paying a small fee, to
get premium exposure without having to leave the comfort of his couch or wait for the
newspaper print date. For example if you want to sell your car or house, all you’d have to do is
pull out your smartphone, take few photos, tick a few boxes, and boom, your advertisement
would be online.
From a user’s perspective, spending hours going through print pages and circling ads, setting-up
comparison tables, writing down phone numbers and waiting for next week’s edition for new
options is now replaced by a sophisticated search that allows you to look for cars by brand,
year, body type, fuel type, and price, get in touch by email or phone, and set-up alerts in case
what a user wants is not available now, but could become available in the next minutes or
hours. The same great experience applies to real-estate, jobs, electronics, services, and
whatever buy/sell category you can imagine.
To understand the seismic nature of the shift that happened in the past few years,
approximately 25 percent of Internet users in the Arab world have used online classifieds. This
put the total audience of top regional classifieds websites at an estimate of more than 35
million users per month by mid-2014. This includes varying using habits from daily to weekly or
more, which far exceeds not only the audience of print classifieds, but that of all print media in
the Arab world –be it daily, weekly, or monthly.
On a country basis, a leading classifieds website in Saudi Arabia for example reaches 250-400
thousand users a day, depending on the day of the week, while the leading newspaper and

4. 4 www.arabbusinessreview.com
leading classifieds weekly in the country prints no more than half this number on their best day.
In terms of depth, classifieds websites usually have tens of thousands of postings per day,
compared to a maximum of several hundred posts in the daily, and low one-digit thousand
posts in weekly print classifieds.
Online classifieds have become so popular in the Arab world that in some countries the leading
classifieds website is more popular than Facebook. This is the case for leading Arabic classifieds
website OpenSooq.com, which is a leader in its category in several countries including Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan. With a simple, easy to use website and popular iOS and Android
apps, OpenSooq is not only leading in countries that have mature online audiences, but also in
countries where the number of Internet users is growing very quickly via smartphones, such as
Iraq and Libya.
In expat-dominated countries such as UAE, Qatar, and Oman, English-language generic
classifieds website Dubizzle has done well by focusing on business-to-consumer advertising in
sectors such as real estate, offering advanced search functionalities, and a more elaborate user
interface.
OpenSooq.com and Dubizzle are joined by category leaders who have focused on specific
verticals, such as Propertyfinder, focused on real estate in the UAE, and Haraj, the undisputed
leader in automotive classifieds in Saudi Arabia.
Globally, online classifieds is a business that is mostly local or regional, where global websites
are usually of low value outside their geographical area. The sector is also usually one of the
first categories to mature with emergence of regional leaders. This has been the case indeed in
MENA, with the business leaders in online classifieds mostly being home-grown start-ups that
are now valued at tens of millions of dollars. That’s just for starters, as they have tremendous
growth potential ahead of them. I’d advise you to keep an eye on this sector.

5. 5 www.arabbusinessreview.com
The article is written by Khaldoon Tabaza for Arab Business Review
To read more thought-leadership stuff by leaders from Arab Region, please visit Arab Business Review