During Ramadan, Meta Ads CPMs in the UAE and Saudi Arabia can rise 40–80% as advertisers compete for the same audience. Here is how to plan your budget and targeting to maintain performance through the highest-competition period of the year.
Ramadan is the most competitive advertising period in the Middle East. Brands that have been inactive all year flood Meta and Google with budget. Audiences change their consumption habits dramatically — later hours, higher purchase intent for certain categories, stronger emotional responses to specific messaging. CPMs rise sharply.
Most advertisers respond to Ramadan either by cutting budget because costs are up, or by increasing budget without changing strategy. Both approaches miss the point. This article explains what actually happens to ad performance during Ramadan and how to plan around it.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is determined by auction competition. During Ramadan, local and regional brands increase their spend significantly to capture seasonal purchase intent — particularly in categories like food, fashion, gifts, and electronics. More advertisers bidding for the same impressions means higher clearing prices in the auction.
In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, CPM increases of 40–80% during the first two weeks of Ramadan are common across mid-to-large advertisers. The increase is not uniform across all placements or audience segments — some audiences become more expensive faster than others.
Not every business should increase Ramadan spend. The categories where purchase intent genuinely rises during Ramadan — food delivery, retail, gifting, hospitality, electronics, and fashion — see conversion rates that can offset the higher CPMs. If you are in one of these categories, Ramadan deserves increased investment.
For B2B services, professional services, SaaS, and categories not associated with seasonal purchase behaviour, Ramadan often means higher costs with no corresponding increase in intent. In these cases, a controlled budget with tighter targeting is more efficient than matching competitor spend increases.
The honest framework: look at your own historical data. If last Ramadan your conversion rate held steady despite higher CPMs, your category benefits from the season. If conversion rates dropped while costs rose, you were paying more for the same intent level — and should plan more conservatively.
The standard approach we use: build your Ramadan plan in three phases.
A budget envelope approach: set a total Ramadan budget before the period begins and divide it by phase rather than running standard daily budgets. This prevents the algorithms from spending too aggressively in week one when CPMs peak.
Ramadan audiences respond differently to creative. Hard sell messaging underperforms — the cultural context rewards generosity, community, and values-driven communication. Even for businesses that are not directly Ramadan-seasonal, creative that acknowledges the month without being forced performs better than creative that ignores it entirely.
Practically: avoid urgency-based CTAs ('limited time offer', 'only 3 left') in favour of value-based CTAs ('discover', 'learn more', 'join'). Test creative that features Ramadan visual cues — evening setting, family context, warm colour palette — against your standard creative. The lift from culturally contextual creative can partially offset the CPM increase.
Ramadan performance data is not representative of the rest of the year. Do not use CPMs, CTRs, or conversion rates from Ramadan to set benchmarks or inform budget decisions for other periods. Keep Ramadan data labelled separately in your reporting and treat it as a seasonal data point.
The most useful analysis: compare your Ramadan performance year-over-year. If your cost-per-acquisition during Ramadan is improving year-on-year despite higher CPMs, your strategy is getting better. If it is getting worse, identify which phase of the plan is underperforming and adjust the following year.
Clickvertise Team
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