This article was published on November 6, 2012

Twitter prepares to launch Promoted Products in the Middle East, with the help of a local ad agency


Twitter prepares to launch Promoted Products in the Middle East, with the help of a local ad agency

Twitter is looking to ramp up its revenue efforts in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region, and it has chosen Connect Ads as its sales rep for the MENA area.

The deal will help Twitter localize and target its Promoted Products from later this year, and follows the recent news that Twitter is rolling out targeting options for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts, to let advertisers display ads based on users’ ‘topical interests’.

Under this new partnership, Connect Ads will manage Twitter’s ads in Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and it will also help develop the broader MENA market for Twitter’s Promoted Products through a range of education and training programs for agencies and large advertisers. A dedicated Connect Ads sales team specializing solely in Twitter’s advertising products will be set up later this year too.

Just to recap, Twitter’s suite for marketers include Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends, and are currently available to businesses in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Latin America.

“MENA is one of Twitter’s fastest-growing regions, and we are seeing significant interest from marketers there who want to use our Promoted Products to build their businesses and connect with consumers,” says Shailesh Rao, Twitter’s vice president of international revenue. “Working with Connect Ads gives Twitter a strong partner with a footprint throughout the region and proven digital capabilities enabling us to scale and educate the markets as we introduce Twitter’s Promoted Products. This is the next step in expanding Twitter’s international presence, building on top of our recent launch in Latin America earlier this year.”

Connect Ads is the digital advertising subsidiary of OTVentures for the MENA region. Launched in 2002, Connect Ads today owns several specialised regional operations, all working in the digital realm. These include Search Worx, a performance-based marketing agency specialising in SEM, SEO and PPC models amongst others and Tattlr, a social media arm offering platform building, presence engagement, and analytics services.

Connect Ads covers thirteen markets through its seven regional offices, namely, Cairo, Egypt (HQ); Dubai, UAE; Jeddah and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Casablanca, Morocco; Karachi, Pakistan; and Doha, Qatar.

Following its launch in the US, Promoted Trends kicked off in the UK a little over a year ago, and with Japan and Latin America also now on board, Twitter is looking to bolster its revenues in a region that has taken to the micro-blogging network like a duck to water.

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