The Middle East’s social media scene is going to get much hotter with Snapchat opening up in Dubai (image source: hashtag-me.com)

It’s finally happening. The ephemeral social media network, the reason behind the doggie nose pictures and floral crowns, is coming to the Middle East. Yes, Snapchat is almost here. The story was broken by Communicate Middle East last week, with Cairo-based online publisher Digital Boom adding more details. I’ve included all the information below from both stories.

As reported by multiple industry sources, Snapchat is ready to make its entry into the Middle East market with its first office in Dubai toward the end of this year.

Heading the operation will be Hussein Freijeh, who is best known for his long-standing role with Maktoob – and then Yahoo – for more than a decade, until Yahoo shut down its Middle East operations in late 2015.

While pricing levels have yet to be set for Middle East customers, Snapchat will be offering a number of products, including geofilters and SnapAds. The service, which is especially popular with internet users under the age of 18 across the Gulf region, revealed in June that 150 million people were using the service each day globally, surpassing the daily active users on social media micro-site Twitter. The app had 110 million daily users in December 2015.

Snapchat’s timing of its move into the region is fascinating. The company may IPO as early as March next year, and the Gulf is a fast growing market for the firm’s app (possibly its fastest worldwide). How will brands react? It’s a difficult one to say, as Snapchat has an interesting range of advertising products which are different from anything in the market. In terms of the youth market, Snapchat will be the key platform to use. However, how will this affect spending on other platforms? Will Snapchat pull in dollars from Instagram, its closest rival, or from other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

What is clear is that with Snapchat opening up its platform to advertising in the MENA region, brands here will have to develop a Snapchat presence and start learning about this unique social media channel. To date, there are few Arab brands on the site (Souq.com, Al Hilal Bank and a couple of hotels are some exceptions I know of), and brands will face a steep learning curve if they’re to get the best out of Snapchat and engage with its young audience.