Facebook in Saudi Arabia is a mine source for all marketers who seek to reach a wide and diverse audience base.

Facebook not only offers you extended reachability but also gives you the functionality of targeting your specified target audience by using metrics such as demographics, interest and more.

So, if you have a limited budget and a specific audience in mind you don’t have to think twice before choosing a social media channel like Facebook to promote your content.

With over 9 Million users in 2018, and an expected growth rate of 2% in 2019 one can hardly complain about the market size and its potential growth.   

We used Saudi Arabia Facebook users as a representative case to provide you with an easy guide to reference, upon creating and launching your next Facebook ad-campaign.

 We started analyzing Facebook audience data in Saudi Arabia according to three main elements; Gender, Interests, and age groups. One of the questions we aim to answer is what is the most popular interest among each Age Group and Gender.

Most Active Age Group

Through analyzing the country’s demographics, it’s apparent that there are no differences when it comes to the active age groups in Facebook.

Both genders show the same age group pattern, the only difference is in the user’s numbers, which is expected as Male users dominate the platform in general and especially in Saudi Arabia.

(19-29) age group is the most active one for both males and females, in fact, it’s very prominent that it represents 48% of the total audience.

Second largest age group (30-39) is 31% of the total audience volume. So, needless to say, young adults (19-39) represent the majority of Facebook audience in Saudi Arabia. 

However, if you aim to target the more mature audience, 40 years and above, things wouldn’t be so bad as you would still have about 2.5 Million different users of both genders. And with a little bit below the 1.5 Million mark, teenagers are not a force to be taken lightly as well for (13-19) age group.

Male and Female Interests

Now that we have established the age of the audience, we need to understand what they like

We can see that combining the interests of both Male and Female audience, with over 17.5 Million Users interested in Hobbies and Activities makes it be the most liked interest. However, we should point out that there are several differences when it comes to the preferences of each gender.

Females in Saudi Arabia actually prefer Shopping and Fashion, and Entertainment above all other interest. Meanwhile, the Male audience appreciate Business and Industry more than Shopping and Fashion which falls to third place in raking

Fitness and Wellness is the least popular among both genders.

Age Group, Gender and Interest

(19-39)

Now that the general Is out of the way, we wanted to dive deeper to better understand the top interests for each age group according to each gender.

Hobbies and Activities seems a popular interest among the top three age groups as they managed to be always on the top three liked interests for both genders alike, with an understandable difference in ranking

While Shopping and Fashion seem to be really popular among the Females of ages (19-39), we notice the absence of this interest among the top interests for the Males of the same age group.

40-49

Top liked Interests is quite different for Males and Females. Business and Industry is the most popular interest among males, and not even in the top three likes interests for Females of the same age group. It’s replaced, however, with Shopping and Fashion as the most liked Interest for females

50-64

In this age group, there are more similarities than differences, both genders favored Hobbies and Activities, and Business Industry as their top two interests. but when it comes to the third interest the male audience preferred Technology, whereas the female audience favored Entertainment.

65+

Again Females favor shopping and Fashion whilst Males appreciated Sports and Outdoors interests, actually, the Males of 65 and above age group is unique in having this interest among the top three most popular Interests.