DUBAI, UAE October 1st, 2014 :- Google yesterday hosted Pulse, the companys first-ever YouTube event in Dubai for the advertising industry. Global executives, Robert Kyncl, Head of Content and Operations for YouTube and Lucas Watson, Vice President for Global Brand Solutions at Google were present to address more than 200 people from across the media and marketing landscape. Pulse highlighted the development of the content creator ecosystem globally and in the region, growing channels on the platform and opportunities for brands to reach diverse audiences on YouTube. This is happening as total watchtime on the platform continues to grow (by 50% since 2013) , with six billion hours of video a month watched on YouTube by more than one billion viewers around the world.

Advertisers and content creators are using YouTube to entertain, inspire and inform their most valuable audiences, said Robert Kyncl, Global Head of Content and Operations for YouTube. The MENA region has amazing talent and the content that is being created on YouTube is getting better every single year.

Consumer Trends

YouTube shared highlights from Googles recent consumer connected survey, a comprehensive study on users in the UAE, that shows that 90% of smartphone users are online daily on their devices and 80% use their smartphones to watch videos online. YouTube also released figures from its YouTube mobile report which shows that YouTubes app ranks second in the UAE in terms of time spent. In the UAE where smartphone penetration is one of the highest in the world, 40% of views on YouTube in the UAE come from mobile .

Brand Reach

Users in MENA are some of the most avid watchers on YouTube in the world and studies show that when users see ads on both TV and YouTube, they have twice the brand recall . In the UAE, more than half of users connect to the internet while watching TV . Cross-media studies have shown that advertisers can easily reach 8% more of their key audience from being on YouTube as well as TV, (versus 1.6% in UK and 2% in US) . In KSA, nearly two thirds of users wished more brands would use YouTube to engage with them and help them learn more about products and services.

Original Content

Ahead of the event, Saudi fashion designer AlanoudBadr, announced that she will be producing her first show on YouTube, Fozaza TV (youtube.com/fozazatv), which collected hundreds of thousands of views in just three days from it going live. This is the first reality fashion channel in the region which will deliver recurring shows and episodes of behind the scenes content by the young Arab designers professional day-to-day life.