Saudi ad costs spike around Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, Saudi National Day on 23 September, and White Friday in late November, with Founding Day on 22 February and Riyadh Season adding strong regional peaks. Conversion rates usually rise with the costs, so the higher price is often worth paying. The expensive mistake is not the spike, it is raising budgets after the auction has already tightened.
The short version
- Four reliable national peaks: Ramadan and Eid, Founding Day, National Day, White Friday.
- In Ramadan the shopping day moves to after iftar and late at night.
- Raise budgets two weeks before a window opens so campaigns are out of learning in time.
- Post-Eid and deep summer are the cheap windows. Use them to test.
Saudi Arabia has a more pronounced advertising calendar than almost any market we work in. Between the religious calendar, the national days and the retail festivals, there are four or five windows a year where the auction changes character completely.
Plan for them and they are the best months of your year. Ignore them and you will spend most of your annual budget at peak prices for average results.
The calendar
| Window | When | What happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founding Day يوم التأسيس | 22 February | Strong national sentiment, heavy brand advertising, category-specific retail lift | Good for brand-led creative. Not every category benefits commercially. |
| Ramadan رمضان | Moves about 11 days earlier each year. Begins around 8 February in 2027 | The largest commercial season. Costs climb steadily and peak in the final ten nights | Budget raised two weeks before. Shift scheduling to evenings. |
| Eid al-Fitr عيد الفطر | End of Ramadan | Short, extremely high intent, extremely expensive | Front-load. Offers live before the moon is sighted. |
| Post-Eid | Two to three weeks after | Costs fall away sharply | Cheapest quality traffic of the first half. Test creative. |
| Eid al-Adha عيد الأضحى | Around June | Second gifting peak, shorter and less intense than Eid al-Fitr | Worth planning for in gifting, fashion and food. |
| Summer | July to August | Large share of the audience travelling, low cost, low volume | Lower budgets. Test angles for autumn. |
| Saudi National Day اليوم الوطني | 23 September | Major national retail moment, very heavy competition | Real offers only. Green creative alone is not a strategy. |
| Riyadh Season | Autumn into winter | Enormous attention and footfall in the capital | Strong for Riyadh-targeted campaigns, entertainment, food, retail. |
| White Friday الجمعة البيضاء | Late November | Sharp spike, comparison shopping, discount-driven | You need a genuine offer. Otherwise sit it out. |
| December to January | After the peaks | Quiet and cheap | Rebuild, clean up, prepare for Ramadan. |
Ramadan and Eid dates move against the Gregorian calendar each year, so build your plan against the Hijri date, because last year’s week will be wrong. Saudi public holidays are announced in advance and worth checking against your promotional plan, and the wider Saudi digital adoption picture is useful background when you are deciding how aggressive to be.
The Ramadan timing detail nobody accounts for
This is the highest-value paragraph in the article, so read it twice.
During Ramadan, the Saudi shopping day inverts. Daytime traffic falls away as people fast and work shortened hours. Activity picks up sharply after iftar, and there is a second, often larger wave very late at night, well past midnight.
If your ad scheduling, your budget pacing and your email sends are all built around a normal working day, you are buying your most expensive impressions during the quietest hours of the entire month.
Pull your own hourly conversion report from last Ramadan before you plan this one. One hour of looking at real data beats any benchmark, including ours.
What do the 2027 Saudi dates look like?
The fixed dates you can diary today. The Hijri ones move with the moon sighting, so treat them as expected and confirm nearer the time against the Umm al-Qura calendar, which is what Saudi planning runs on.
| Date | Occasion | What it does to your auction |
|---|---|---|
| Mon 8 Feb 2027 | Ramadan begins (expected) | Costs start climbing in the last week of January, before the month itself |
| Mon 22 Feb 2027 | Founding Day يوم التأسيس | Day 15 of Ramadan in 2027. Two seasons stacked on one auction |
| Mon 8 Mar 2027 | Last fast (expected) | The final ten nights are the most expensive inventory of the Saudi year |
| Tue 9 Mar 2027 | Eid al-Fitr (expected) | Gifting demand peaks ahead of it, then falls away for roughly a week after |
| Sat 15 May 2027 | Day of Arafah (expected) | Commercial attention goes to near zero for about 48 hours |
| Sun 16 May 2027 | Eid al-Adha (expected) | Shorter and far less retail-driven than Eid al-Fitr |
| Thu 23 Sep 2027 | Saudi National Day اليوم الوطني | Fixed date. Heavy discounting, and every advertiser knows it is coming |
| From Oct 2027 | Riyadh Season | Entertainment and dining pull attention and spend for months |
| Fri 26 Nov 2027 | White Friday | Pinned to the day after US Thanksgiving. The most expensive Friday of the year |
The 2027 detail worth planning around. Ramadan arrives in early February, which leaves 73 days between White Friday 2026 and the first fast, and January sits in the middle of them as the dead month. If you intend to have tested creative before Ramadan 2027, the testing window is November and December 2026. By the time January budget meetings happen, you are already inside the run-up.
Founding Day falling on day 15 of Ramadan is the other one. In most years you would run it as a short national-pride campaign of its own. In 2027 it sits mid-Ramadan, so a Founding Day message is bidding against Ramadan inventory while the two audiences want different things from you. Pick one and let the other go.
How to budget against a peak
Six weeks out: decide the offer. Not the creative. The offer. A festival campaign with no offer is just expensive traffic with a themed background.
Four weeks out: build creative. Three to five concepts, in Arabic, vertical, captioned. Fatigue accelerates when the whole Kingdom is advertising to the same people. The creative rules are in the platform comparison.
Two weeks out: raise budgets gradually. This is the step that separates the businesses that profit from a season and the ones that pay for it. Raising budget on day one of a peak means your campaigns do their learning during the most expensive fortnight of the year.
During: watch cost per purchase, not CPM. CPM will look alarming and tell you nothing. Cost per purchase is the only number that answers the question you are asking.
After: come down slowly, over a week, and write down what the season cost so next year starts from evidence.
The pattern in that chart is the point, not the currency. Peaks are where the attention is. The flat weeks between them are where the margin lives, which is the argument we make at length in why a 3x ROAS can beat an 8x.
A retailer who paused all campaigns three days into Ramadan because their CPM had nearly doubled.
By the time they restarted, the learning phase had reset, the last ten nights had passed and competitors had taken the audience. They saved a few thousand in ad spend and lost far more in revenue. Costs rising is not the same as campaigns failing, and the auction getting expensive is evidence that the season is working.
Planning your Ramadan or White Friday budget?
Send us last year’s numbers and this year’s plan. We will tell you where the budget should sit week by week in SAR, when to raise it, and whether your offer is strong enough to justify peak pricing at all.
Frequently asked questions
When do ad costs peak in Saudi Arabia?
Ramadan and the run-up to Eid al-Fitr, then Saudi National Day on 23 September, then White Friday in late November. Founding Day on 22 February and Riyadh Season create strong regional and category-specific spikes as well.
Should Saudi businesses advertise during Ramadan?
Yes, but plan it in advance. Costs rise, and so do conversion rates. The businesses that lose money in Ramadan are usually the ones that raised budgets after the auction had already got expensive, or paused mid-season and lost their learning.
What happens to shopping hours during Ramadan in Saudi Arabia?
The buying day shifts dramatically later. Daytime traffic falls away and activity peaks after iftar and again very late at night. Ad scheduling built around a normal working day wastes a large share of the budget.
Is White Friday bigger than Black Friday in Saudi Arabia?
In the Saudi market, White Friday is the name that carries the meaning and it is a major retail event. Expect heavy competition, comparison shopping and a sharp CPM spike. Without a genuine offer you pay peak prices for ordinary results.
What is the cheapest time to advertise in Saudi Arabia?
The weeks straight after Eid al-Fitr and the deep summer, when a large share of the audience is travelling. Volumes drop with the costs, so use those windows to test creative.