In my research experience as Director of VAS and Research here at Crowd Analyzer, I do believe Ramadan is truly an insightful month in terms of data and insights for Marketers, Advertisers and even social researchers and here is why.

In Ramadan 2019 we set out to monitor many channels for Ramadan related queries from desserts, charity and all the way into the super busy Television including series, shows, stars, tv channel accounts and ads of course (more on this in Crowd Analyzer’s upcoming Ramadan Report).

Over the span of 33 days from May 5th 2019 to June 6th 2019, the Crowd Analyzer platform crawled and analyzed 241.62k videos that amassed to 45.10 M interactions which ideally meant 7,32 k videos a day. With a simple calculation this means a video was being released on a social platform every 12 seconds.

Huge? We kid you not!

Ramadan this year was huge in many ways, the dominating language of videos was Arabic with a whopping %95.6 and Egypt dominated the locations with a massive 52.42%. That is a big wake up call for regional advertisers and content makers because these number clearly indicate that Egypt both produces and interacts with Ramadan content on a very wide scale.

Even with most content owners (TVs and production houses) refused to air content on Youtube as was the case every Ramadan, the video based platform was still the highest in interactions gained per video with 63.1%. Does that mean pirates still managed to air series and shows on Youtube despite the embargo? We will answer that in our upcoming Ramadan report.

The 11th Hour

The question all social listening enthusiasts in the region keep on asking me is “what was the best time to post videos if one wants the highest views/interactions?”

Well, let’s clear the way by saying Ramadan trumps all, meaning that you can post any day you want regardless of regular schedules people keep. Everyone is literally up doing something online whether on Friday, Sunday or Tuesday. This means regular “high times” don’t apply here.

We have analyzed all videos to discover that the top hours for posting that resonate in high volume of interactions are as follows.

The time frame when we would all be reeling from fasting in a hot summer day is actually the timeframe where videos posted definitely got the highest interactions which are

“2-3-5 PM! “

However, the top hours where videos actually got posted were 6-8-9 pm. So if you manage social media pages and post a lot of videos in Ramadan, I just gave you a cheat-sheet for Ramadan 2020.

The True Influencers

There is a famous misnomer when it comes to Influencers and Marketing. Everyday people assume influencers are the fashionista and pranksters out there who are paid to do social media posts and rightfully so, they can be influencers in the sense that they can be paid to promote a brand, not always successfully though.

In Social Listening it is completely different though, platforms will choose video influencers solely based on the number of views, mentions and overall interactions. Them being paid or being famous is irrelevant in this case.

We looked at the top influencers in terms of video and here is what we found:

Twitter:

The top personal (not business) accounts who became influential in terms of videos were

In terms of business accounts, MBC took home the gold!

With Facebook and Instagram the case remains largely the same, MBC Group totally won the business account game on social media.

The Youtube Case

With everyone interacting away on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the ole’ mighty Youtube still remained a strong contestant in the video game of Ramadan 2019.

Our tool captured 681,754,246 total views which amasses to around 239 views per second! Imagine that in advertising money lost with removing content from Youtube towards pay-per-view platforms like Netflix, Watchit, Viu and Shahid.

You can see the rapid increase in viewership towards Eid which I believe represents an addiction to know what happens next as all series near their end and due to a more lax content ownership claims sent to remove content from Youtube towards the end of the month so more unauthorized content began to show.

The Award for most extraordinary performance goes to MBC group and its affiliates as the top in business accounts on Youtube while only two personal accounts on Youtube managed to do a great job: Mohamed Ramadan and Ramez Galal for keeping on posting, interacting and sharing new content every single day in Ramadan 2019.

Takeaways from Ramadan 2019:

Video is still king for a TV heavy season and it is a battle that must be heeded carefully. Videos aren’t just a post but more of a carefully planned and executed operation that must be treated with more care and vigilance.

I am personally, waiting impatiently, for Ramadan 2020 to see how brands, advertisers, producers and the general audience do to win this rich month.

As promised here is a link to my presentation on videos in Ramadan 2019.