The research for this report and the period it covers took place before the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Our modelling and polling sought to quantify Google’s impact in the year 2019. While it is too early to be certain of the long-term economic impact of the pandemic, in the last few months we have seen how digital tools can help families stay informed and connected, and businesses adapt to new ways of working.
10 ways in which the lives of Saudis are were helped by Google in 2019
Google supports the economic growth of Saudi Arabia
1. In total, we estimate Google’s products support between 4.3 and 10.5 SAR billion a year in economic activity. Over the last five years, the economic activity driven by Google Search and Ads has grown by 189% in nominal terms.
2. Google is helping industries such as tourism thrive. Over 86% of Saudi Google Search users use it at least once a year to help them research a holiday, while 80% of tourist businesses agree that online search has made it easier for tourists to find their business.
Google creates products that are helpful and valued by everyone
3. Together, Google Search and Google Maps saves the average Saudi 36 hours a year.
4. In total, our estimates suggest that you would have to pay the average Saudi Arabian internet user around 317 SAR per month in compensation for them to decide to give up Google products. That is the equivalent of an additional 4% of GDP. Because they are often provided free at the point of use, much of the value created by Google products is not included in traditional economic statistics.
Google helps businesses grow and innovate
5. Online search is now an important way that customers find businesses. In total, we estimate that referral traffic and paid advertising through Google Search, Google Ads and AdSense support between 4 and 10.1 SAR bn in economic activity per year in Saudi Arabia by helping businesses reach a wider range of customers.
6. Google is creating create a more consumer centric retail sector. 87% of shoppers think they make better purchasing decisions because of online information, and 86% of businesses think it is harder to get away with poor goods, food or service because of the internet.
Google helps workers be more productive, learn new skills and develop their careers
7. Google is making workers more productive. 60% of online workers agreed that search engines make their work easier and take less time. In total, we estimate that Google Search and G Suite are creating at least 4.0 SAR billion a year in business time savings for the Saudi Arabian economy.
8. Google is helping people find jobs and learn new skills. Every year, 79% of 18-24 year old Search users use it to find a job, and 83% to get advice on their CV. 89% of Google Search users use it at least once a month to learn a new skill.
Google is committed to helping people learn and stay safe online
9. Google Search is being used by people of all ages to learn. 81% of Search users say they are more likely to look something up when they are unsure about it than when before Search engines existed.
10. Google Search is helping keep people safe online. 79% of online Saudis say they are worried about online frauds or scams, and 73% about children’s usage of technology. In order to help keep families safe, Google has trained 30,000 students, parents and teachers on internet safety through the Abtal Al Internet program.
Introduction - Google’s impact in Saudi Arabia
The internet has created an era of unprecedented consumer and business choice
In 2018, for the first time, more than half the world’s population had access to the internet.1 Every day, around 900 million gigabytes of new data are created - the equivalent of 30 trillion digital photos.2
While we often talk about the benefits the internet has brought consumers through lower prices and greater transparency, even more important has been the sheer increase in choice and variety. An online retailer today can offer over 500 million products, while over 500 hours of new content are uploaded to YouTube alone every minute.3 One academic estimate from relatively early in the internet’s history suggested that, for example, for books the gains from increased choice are 7-10 times as large as the gains from lower prices or increased competition.4 For the first time, anyone with a smartphone or a web browser can access much of the world’s literature, science, movies, music, news, or games.
But while
it has been transformational for consumers, the internet has also radically
expanded choices for businesses. Just as consumers can find goods from anywhere
in the world, businesses can tap new markets for their services too. This has
enabled new types of globally oriented businesses - from small manufacturing
firms to new types of content creators.
Google helps people get things done, and grows the economy
Google’s mission is to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As a gateway to the internet for many people, Google’s products like Search, YouTube, and Android have made it possible to navigate the vast amount of new information created by the internet.
In this report, Google commissioned us to seek to both better understand and quantify the ways in which their products help and enable Saudi Arabian people and businesses:
- How Google’s products support economic growth in Saudi Arabia. We look at the overall economic impact of Google in Saudi Arabia, and how it is powering industries such as tourism and retail.
- The different ways Google’s products help individuals and families in their everyday lives. We explore how Google’s products help people get things done, save time, and better connect with their friends and family.
- How Google helps businesses grow and innovate. We look at how Google is making it easier for small companies to connect with customers worldwide, increasing consumer power and enabling entirely new types of business.
- How Google helps people be more productive, learn new skills and develop their careers. We look at how workers are using Google products to get more done, how Google Search is an increasingly important way for people to find jobs and the potential from AI to further enable workers to be even more productive.
- How Google is helping people learn, and stay safe online. We examine how Saudis of all ages are using Google to learn, and what they think is needed to help them stay safe online.
Much of the value created by Google is not included in traditional economic statistics
Many of the most popular products of the internet are open and accessible for anyone to use - including many of Google’s leading services, such as Google Search, YouTube and Android.
Traditional economic statistics measure the value of a business or a product by the increases in economic transactions they create - in other words, by how much we have paid for something. That means they do not pick up many of the positive impacts created by Google’s open products - from saving us time around the home, to making it easier to communicate with distant relatives. Other studies have calculated that if you included the value provided by all open internet services in GDP, it would boost the growth rate by 0.7 percentage points a year.
In order to better understand the full breadth of the impact Google creates, we combined a range of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. We ran a new nationally representative poll of 1000 Saudis across the country, exploring how they used Google products in their ordinary life and how much value it was creating for them. At the same time we spoke to 501 senior business leaders across different types of industry and size of business, trying to assess the difference these products were making to their workforce. Finally, we constructed multiple economic models which could help us quantify the total size of the benefits created by Google for the Saudi Arabian economy or standard of living.
In total, measured traditionally, we estimate that Google products are supporting between 4.3 and 10.5 SAR billion in economic activity for local businesses.
As important as this traditional economic value, however, is the value created and time saved in everyday life. You would have to compensate the average person in Saudi Arabia 317 SAR per month to voluntarily give up access to Google products.
How we quantified Google’s impact in Saudi Arabia
Traditional economic statistics often do not take full account of the full benefits of the digital economy, such as saved time or the increased opportunities that seamless, rapid access to information can bring. This would also have been true of the printing press or TV. But just because something is hard to measure, it does not mean that it is unimportant.
In this paper, we sought to use a range of different methods to quantify the economic impact and help provided by Google Search, YouTube, Android and other Google products:
- To start, building on the precedent of previous Google impact reports,5 we used traditional economic modelling built upon third-party estimates of Google’s Saudi Arabian market size, potential returns on investment (ROI) and productivity enhancements to measure the economic activity driven by Google Search, Google Ads, AdSense, YouTube, Android and Google Cloud.
- In order to build a broader picture of the benefits, we conducted extensive public polling to ask individuals and businesses how they made use of Google products, and what difference they made to their leisure, work and society. Working with the panel provider MSI-ACI, we polled a nationally-representative sample of 1000 adults and 501 senior business managers in small, medium and large businesses across Saudi Arabia, asking them 50 and 23 questions respectively about their experience using Google and other online products. Public First is a member of the British Polling Council, and full tables for all the data used in this report is available to download from our website.
- Finally, we explored 20 in-depth case studies of how businesses and individuals across the different regions and industries of Saudi Arabia are using Google to power their business.
We go into greater depth on our methodology in the last chapter, which explores how it compares and contributes to the wider debate on measuring the value created by the Internet. The full technical details are given in an appendix at the end of the report.
While
Google commissioned this report from Public First, all economic estimates are
derived from official, third party and proprietary information.
Google supports the economic growth of Saudi Arabia
The value of Google products in the economy
How Google supports growth
When we think of the economic activity driven by the Internet, we often focus on the creators of the software and hardware we use as consumers - the maker of our latest gadget or app.
In reality, however, the indirect impact of new technology is much more economically important that the direct revenue of its creators. What makes technology important is its ability to catalyse higher productivity for businesses and workers across all sectors in the economy.
This is particularly true of Google. In this report, we focus on three ways in which Google products and services have boosted economic growth in Saudi Arabia:
- They have made it easier for local businesses to connect with customers in Saudi Arabia and worldwide. According to our business poll, 89% of Saudi Arabian businesses believe that online search is now an important way consumers find them, more important even than word of mouth (75%).
- They have provided underlying platforms for new types of jobs and companies. YouTube, for example, we estimate is generating 80 million SAR for local creators.
- They have boosted the productivity of individual workers and businesses. While we have not included this value in our headline estimate of the economic activity supported by Google, we estimate that the enhanced productivity from Google Search and Apps is helping save Saudi Arabian businesses at least 4.0 SAR bn a year.
The economic impact of Google
Measured conservatively, we estimate that Google products support between 4.5 and 10.5 SAR bn of economic activity for Saudi Arabian businesses.
This estimate is built upon third party estimates of ad revenues in Saudi Arabia, and, as such, may be an underestimate of the full value created by Google in Saudi Arabia.6
As a company, Google’s primary source of revenue is advertising, and a significant amount of the value the company creates for Saudi companies we estimate comes from Search and Google Ads (4.0 SAR bn annually).
Over the last five years, the economic activity driven by Google Search and Ads has grown by 189% in nominal terms.
This value is generated right across the country.
Google Search and Ads Economic Impact in Saudi Arabia (million SAR)
Google contribution to GVA by region (SAR)
Helping the tourism industry
Take the tourism industry. The tourism industry is a major contributor to Saudi Arabia’s economy - according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, supporting around 9% of GDP and over 1.1 million jobs.7
In our polling we discovered that Google tools
were now an important tool used by tourists from right across the Middle East
and Europe to help them navigate around, find things to do and translate across
languages. Over 86% of Saudi Google Search users use it at
least once a year to help them research a holiday.
Tourist businesses, too, were increasingly making use of Google tools to help potential customers find them, or spread the word about especially good service.
Of the tourism businesses, we spoke to:
- 80% agreed that online search has made it easier for tourists to find their business
- 82% agreed that online reviews have increased the importance of good customer service and 68% that they’ve decreased the importance of traditional guide books
- 79% agreed that strong digital skills can be an important competitive advantage for a tourism company
Which of the following would you say are important ways for customers to find your business? (Tourism Business)
Helping the retail industry
Similarly, Google’s tools are also proving crucial for the Saudi retail sector. The country’s retail industry, currently worth $106bn, is expected to grow to $119bn by 2023. Non-store retailing, which includes online shopping, is expected to grow by 93% by 2023.8
The majority of Saudi Google Search users are
increasingly finding it a helpful tool when they go shopping:
- 87% regularly use Google Search at least once a month to help research a big purchase
- 87% agreed that they “can make better purchasing decisions because of online information”
When we spoke to retail businesses themselves:
- 80% agreed that online search engines had made maintaining high levels of customer/client satisfaction more important
- 80% agreed that online tools have made it easier to grow and scale their business
How important would you say each of the following are as ways customers/clients find your business? (Retail Business)
By increasing transparency and choice, Search and other online tools have increased effective competition - leading to more productive companies and a better quality service for the end customer. In today’s economy, it is much harder for a business to get away with a poor quality good or service.
This happens not only online, but offline too. 94% of people say they use their phone to research a potential purchase in a shop in the last year. This allows them to avoid products which get poor reviews, and make sure they are paying a good price.
Google creates products that are helpful and valued by everyone
Google makes everyday life easier, freeing up valuable time
The importance of extra time
Since 1960, average weekly working hours in the workplace in the United States fell by over 8%, from 38 to 34 hours.9 As important as the decline in working hours in the office, however, has been the decrease in time spent doing work inside the house. In 1900, data from America shows that an average household would spend 58 a week preparing meals, cleaning and doing laundry. The arrival of new domestic technologies such as the clothes washer, vacuum cleaner and refrigerator helped significantly reduce the time needed for housework. By 2015, the average time spent on those same chores was less than eight hours.
While we do not have as good data for every history, this broad story has been repeated in many countries. Unlike the increase in productivity in the workplace, this increase in leisure time does not directly show up in official GDP statistics. Nevertheless, by significantly freeing up time, these new technologies increased leisure time, allowing households to spend more time catching up, relaxing or pursuing their other projects. On average, those we polled suggest that an additional hour of leisure is worth around 130 SAR to them, suggesting that the extra time freed up by new technology can be highly valuable.
Today, it is increasingly digital technologies that are freeing up
time in the household. In this section, we look at the value of the time saved
by Google products such as Search, Maps, and Assistant. In total, we estimate that Google products are saving at least 36 hours
a year - the equivalent to nearly an extra day and a half in free time.
Most popular uses for Google Search in Saudi Arabia (size=popularity)
Saving time with Google Search and Assistant
Making information easier to access is making a significant difference to people’s lives. Before the arrival of the search engine, the only way to get the answer to a question might be to ask a friend or drive to the library.
When we asked Saudis why they used Google Search:
Speed
- 90% of Search users said speed: it saves them time
Coverage
- 81% of Search users said coverage: it provides information not available in other ways
Convenience
- 85% of Search users said convenience: it is easier or as easy as alternatives
In total, it is estimated that users save at least 23 hours a year from Search compared with other methods of finding information because it is faster and easier to access.10
But this
number is likely to be a lower bound on the time saved by Google Search. If
you included the time saved by applying the new information from Google –
trying out a new recipe, or learning a new skill – the time saved would be even
greater.
Google Assistant
Google launched the Google Assistant in Saudi Arabia. The Google Assistant is a virtual assistant available on mobile devices designed to help people get more things done with their phone. The Google Assistant can understand the Saudi dialect and supports hands-free calling. It is designed to support requests from booking flights and finding cinema timings to searching for new job opportunities. The Assistant is designed to help internet users get more things done with their phone while they are on the go (like driving or exercising), at work (setting alarms, quickly finding information on the web), or while they are with friends and family (jokes, singing fun songs). It will be able to complete a range of tasks using your phone without having to touch your device. While building the Assistant in Arabic, Google relied on machine learning and natural language processing (which helps the Assistant understand Arabic) and natural language generation (which helps it speak Arabic). The team behind the Assistant also developed new technology necessary to process and generate diacritics, the accents used in Arabic to pronounce the same letters in different ways. Diacritics are an element necessary for Arabic pronunciation since the language has many words that may have the same letters but mean different things, and diacritics help differentiate between those words.
Saving time with Google Maps
Until recently, we relied on atlases and paper maps to find new places. We may also have got into arguments about directions while driving, or been worried about going to unknown locations on our own.
Today, we find that Google Maps and other location apps have made it easier for people to find restaurants and businesses, get around in new cities, and get to places more quickly and easily.
When we asked a series of questions about why people used Google Maps, we saw that saving time was very common:
Percentage using Google Maps to...
In total, we estimate that the use of Google Maps save the average Saudi 13.2 hours a year
Google is helping around the home
While not every use of Search will be serious - around 55% of Saudi Arabian users say they use Google Search at least daily to find a piece of trivia - the majority of Saudi Arabian users say that regularly use Search to help with their everyday activities:
- 75% of Search users regularly use Google Search to find a business, and 87% to research a big purchase.
- 85% of Search users regularly use it to research medical and health issues, and 59% to look up a gym or local fitness activities.
And when they do find information, for the most part they find Search useful. 89% of Search users agree that Search helps solve their problem the majority of the time, compared to 14% who thought that it was usually a waste of time or 19% as a way to procrastinate.
Many people find it easier to learn through video rather than text. Like Search, YouTube is increasingly a medium through which people learn more about the world, pursue their hobbies or get help with day to day tasks. Worldwide, there are over 1 billion views of learning-related content on YouTube every day.11
We found that:
- Most of YouTube users use it at least once a year to help with cooking (90%) and help with home maintenance (94%).
- 77% of YouTube users regularly use it watch commentary on the news or political events, and 80% to learn about fitness or health.
YouTube uses: popularity and frequency
Google Doodles
Google Doodles are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists. A group of Googlers get together regularly to brainstorm and decide which events will be celebrated with a doodle. The ideas for the doodles come from numerous sources including Googlers and Google users. The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries that reflect Google's personality and love for innovation. Over the years Google celebrated inspiring figures like legendary Saudi singer Talal Maddah who went on to become a phenomenon throughout the Arab world, releasing numerous albums which continue to reach new audiences, demonstrating the enduring power of music to open hearts and minds.
Google also celebrated Saudi singer Etab, With more than 15 albums to her name, Etab mixed traditional and contemporary Arab songs to create a style of her own, collaborating with top poets and singers from around the region.
Ramadan with Google (Qibla, Qalam, Prayer Time)
During Ramadan, information needs change, from people wanting to know when to start and end their fast, how to prepare Ramadan dishes, and when restaurants and places open during Ramadan . To make it easier to find everything you need, Google created a special tool in the Middle East and North Africa and Indonesia that appears when you search for “Ramadan” on Google. You’ll find customized, locally relevant information—everything from tips and prayer timings to the most popular recipes —all right in your Search results.
Given people are fasting all day, and large families gather during Iftar, preparing delicious food for the people that matter in our lives takes on a new importance. During Ramadan, searches for recipes spike 50 percent higher and watch times on YouTube for cooking videos peak at almost 30 percent higher. You can now explore top recipes and YouTube cooking videos directly through the Ramadan search experience. Cooking videos aren’t the only content people look for on YouTube. Ramadan is the key entertainment season in the Middle East and North Africa and users go to YouTube to catch up on their favorite TV drama or comedy shows. YouTube watch time for “TV series” rises a staggering 151 percent in Ramadan compared to any other period in the year. This Ramadan, you can keep up with the latest Ramadan dramas and comedies directly through Search.
Millions of Muslims around the world turn to Mecca every day for prayer. To help you answer another top question, “What’s the direction of the Qibla?”, Google launched Qibla Finder, a web app that uses augmented reality to show you the direction of the Qibla wherever you are in the world. Google has now enabled offline usage and a shortcut to add Qibla Finder to your Android homescreen, so you can locate Mecca when you’re on the move. Ramadan and Eid greeting cards are the top trending searches before, during and after Ramadan, with queries like “How to wish someone a happy Ramadan” and “How to make an Eid greeting card.“ So to help you create beautiful personalized messages to share during Ramadan, Google launched Qalam from Google.
Google products are used near equally by people of all incomes, ages, and backgrounds
Over the last twenty five years, the Internet and smartphone have gone from being niche products to enjoying mainstream use - one of the fastest rates of adoption of any consumer product ever.
Similarly, Google’s products are widely used by both men and women, and there is little age gradient for Google Search. While the young are slightly more likely to regularly use YouTube, the majority of Google’s products saw high usage across ages.
Use of Google products by age (1 = national average)
We saw clear data that Google’s products were being used by people from all backgrounds to help out with their everyday life:
- 74% of Google Search users with only a basic education regularly use it to learn a new skill
- 93% of YouTube users with only a basic education regularly use it to learn something
The value of Google products in daily life
In this chapter, we have explored some of the ways in which Google products help people in their daily lives: saving time, making it easier to find information, and helping people better keep in touch.
There are all kinds of value that often do not get picked upon by traditional economic impact studies, which have tended to focus on the impact of a company or product on GDP.
GDP itself, however, has never included everything we value or every type of work we do. Taken literally, GDP takes no account of changes in our leisure time or the amount of work we do in non-market roles, such as housework or looking after family. The majority of the kinds of help we have explored in this study do not increase GDP in the way we normally measure it - but most people would agree that they are important.
How can we better understand and quantify the value created by Google in daily life?
One way to do this is to look at changes in the consumer surplus. The consumer surplus is defined by economists as the difference between the amount a consumer would be willing to pay and the amount they actually do pay.
This is particularly relevant for products such as Google’s, which are largely provided to the end user without monetary charge. Just because their price is zero, however, does not mean that they are worthless.
In order to better understand the value of Google, we used two types of methodology to create new estimates for the consumer surplus of its core products:
- Where possible, we produced estimates of the value of the time saved from using Google products such as Search, Maps and YouTube
- We used our consumer polling data to explore what the minimum amount you would have to compensate them for losing access to each product, building on the methodology previously established by other leading economists12
We found that the total consumer surplus of Google’s products in Saudi Arabia is around 317 SAR per month for the median person:
Google Search
For Google Search, the total consumer surplus is equivalent to 62.4 SAR bn.
YouTube
For YouTube, the total consumer surplus is 38 SAR bn a year.
Google Maps
For Google Maps, the total consumer surplus is 18 SAR bn a year.
Consumer Surplus (bn)
The total consumer surplus is equivalent to nearly 4% of GDP.
Crucially, our estimates found that this consumer surplus is significantly higher than for other consumer products. Indeed, when we asked people to choose from a range of things they would least like to give up, we found that Saudis were more reluctant to give up Search than public transport and would rather lose access to a car than give up their smartphone.
Together, this evidence suggests that traditional statistics like GDP
are doing a poor job of measuring the value created by the Internet. Other studies have found that if the value
of free internet services are included within GDP, it would increase the recent
rate of GDP by the equivalent of 0.7 percentage points a year.13
We explore more how our findings fit into the literature in the last
chapter.
Google helps businesses grow and innovate
The referral traffic driven by Google is a highly valuable source of revenue for Saudi Arabian businesses
The evolution of advertising has always been closely tied to changes in the wider structure of the economy. As advertising has become more personalised, targeted and immediate, it has driven growth and innovation in the wider economy: enabling new types of business to connect with customers, and providing a new source of revenue to fund others.
The first adverts were inherently local - as far back as Roman times, there is evidence of signposts and posters being used to drive customers to local businesses. With the 20th century came mass media, bringing an expansion and infusion of new voices. Genre entertainment (such as Westerns, situation comedies, and news shows) was largely premised and funded by the ability to define audience segments as well as generate scale, and sell advertising on that basis. Then radio joined newspapers, TV joined radio and mass-market magazines
Likewise, advertising on the internet is continuing to drive growth and innovation:
- Making it possible for small businesses to more easily reach customers worldwide
- Funding new types of content, including websites, blogs, and video
At the heart of Google’s business model for most of its products is advertising. Google’s key innovation in the advertising space was using data to:
- Help advertisers reach people at the best possible moment;
- Help them ensure that their pounds were well spent;
- Enabling niche businesses to target those with very specific interests.
That means fewer, better ads for the customer - and a much higher rate of return for the business advertising.
While the direct impact of Google Ads is important for Saudi Arabian businesses, even more important is the organic referral provided by Google Search. In our polling, businesses in Saudi Arabia estimated that online search was the most important way of customers finding them, ahead of word of mouth. 85% of the businesses we spoke to agreed that thanks to search engines, it was far easier for local customers and clients to find them.
On average, Google calculates that for every dollar businesses spend on Google Ads, they receive back $8 back in profit. To start, each business receives on average back $2 for every $1 they spend. This in turn is further boosted by traffic that comes through organic search, with other estimates suggesting that businesses receive around five clicks on their search results for every one click on their ads.14
That means the majority of the value created by Google advertising is captured by businesses and their customers. In total, our estimates suggest that Google Search and Ads are driving between 4 and 10.1 SAR bn in total economic activity for businesses in Saudi Arabia.
As before
this estimate is built upon third party estimates of ad revenues in Saudi
Arabia - Google did not give us any new financial information - and, as such,
may be an underestimate of the full value created by Google in Saudi Arabia.15
Business helped by |Google Ads
Jarir: Boosts ecommerce sales in cities with no physical stores
Geo-based targeting techniques meet audience targeting strategies, and a tailored creative approach
In both its physical and online stores, Jarir Bookstore offers an extensive range of products that includes Arabic and English books, office and school supplies, children’s toys, arts and crafts materials, computers, mobile phones, audiovisual instruments and photography tools. For the brand’s latest campaign, it aimed to connect online with consumers who had no physical stores in their cities. Although Jarir delivers its products across Saudi Arabia, data shows that remote cities in which the brand does not have physical stores actually boast more sales potential than major cities that do have shops. Jarir’s goal was to develop a strategy to achieve awareness around its e-commerce platform, as well as reach and influence users in remote cities. Jarir had a two-pronged approach to meeting its objectives.
Combining location targeting techniques with effective audience targeting strategies, it executed its strategy through an always-on campaign that captured ongoing opportunity.
Location targeting allowed for accurate inclusion and exclusion of geographic areas:
- City targeting: Through location targeting using Google Ads, Jarir was able to reach consumers in remote cities such as Al Baha, Najran, Arar, Haqil, and Buraydah.
- Radius targeting: Jarir used radius targeting to showcase ads to users within a 50-kilometer radius of a selected location.
- City exclusions: Location exclusions helped Jarir prevent ads from showing in major cities in which it has physical stores, namely Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Madina, and Abha.
The brand’s audience targeting strategy helped Jarir find relevant users:
- Affinity and In-market: Jarir reached consumers in remote cities based on their interests and habits, and what they were actively researching online. Segments included technology enthusiasts and shoppers in the market for consumer electronics or gifts.
- Custom Intent: The brand reached consumers across YouTube and the Google Display Network based on the searches they made on Google Search.
- Remarketing: Jarir was able to build remarketing lists populated with users who had previously visited the website in remote cities, viewed specific product pages, and watched relevant videos on the brand’s YouTube channel. The brand then showed them ads relevant to their browsing history.
A mix of formats went into Jarir’s always-on campaign. To serve the upper funnel, Jarir served ads on the Google Display Network featuring customized images for each remote city. On YouTube, the team used Bumper and TrueView for Action ads to drive awareness and user actions. For the lower funnel, tailored search ads promoted a message emphasising the fact that Jarir not only delivers to users’ areas but also accepts cash on delivery. Jarir’s search campaigns improved conversion rate threefold, increasing return on ad spend by a factor of 2.5 compared to the website’s average rate. The TrueView for Action campaign, that ran in remote cities, also positively affected brand metrics: a Brand Lift Study showed a best-in-class lift in awareness (6%) and consideration (10%). The accuracy rate was excellent, too: 95% of orders generated by the Google campaigns came from the targeted cities.
Abdul Latif Jameel Motors: After Sales Engages Massive Audience with YouTube Animated Series
ALJ wanted to promote its after sales vehicle maintenance program to people in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), encouraging the use of Toyota genuine parts and services rather than other independent workshops or service chains.
The main challenge was that people perceived Toyota service – which operates under the brand Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) in KSA – as high quality but unfortunately too expensive. To tackle this, ALJ created a fun animated series, Khebayyes & AbuHurayyes on YouTube. The main objective was to change perceptions about ALJ’s value for money proposition by educating customers in an engaging way about the differences between using genuine and non-genuine parts and services. The success of Khebayyes & AbuHurayyes was exceptional, achieving massive reach and gaining vast popularity in KSA.
The series features two main characters to illustrate the two extremes of right and wrong when it comes to conscientious car ownership. On the one hand is the old and wise Abu Hurayyes, who maintains his vehicle regularly. In contrast is a reckless young man named Khebayyes, who likes spending time with his car but isn’t very interested in looking after it responsibly. Over the course of the series, the episodes show Khebayyes’s behavior changing gradually as he faces various situations and begins to listen to Abu Hurayyes’s advice.
Distribution Strategy and Targeting Approach
The series included 20 episodes plus a teaser, which were exclusively hosted on YouTube. New episodes were launched sequentially every Thursday, the beginning of the Saudi weekend. To accompany this activity, the team launched a six months long TrueView ad campaign and three Masthead ads. The team used geographic and demographic targeting to reach the audience most likely to want to watch the series. Negative remarketing achieved reach as it ensured that an episode would not be promoted to a viewer who had seen it already, while positive remarketing achieved engagement, where it encouraged people who had engaged with the series already to view episodes they’d not yet watched.
Campaign Results
Thanks to the fact that ALJ worked very closely with its agencies and Google Creative and Sales teams, the partnership produced highly engaging local content, a strong media distribution strategy and a brilliant execution. The results exceeded expectations, overachieving on all KPIs for reach and engagement. The episodes reached 11.8 million unique users – which represents more than half of the entire online population of KSA – and gained 187 years’ worth of watch time! Thanks to the compelling content, the series gained vast popularity with an unusually high organic viewership (48%) and exceptional levels of engagement in the form of likes and shares. While some episodes were relatively long, the completion rate for the entire campaign was well above average at 57%. The ALJ YouTube channel went from almost zero to 194,000 subscribers, helped in part by the very successful Masthead campaign.
Into the Future
Based on these successes, the ALJ team is already working on a second season, taking on board feedback from users and the significant social interaction that the activity produced. The first request that the ALJ team will try to answer is to lengthen the episodes' duration from three to five minutes on average – the comments asking for longer episodes were overwhelming. Additionally, the ALJ team would like for the second season to be more interactive and related to actual social events so that fans can have better engagement. Going forward, starting from the ideation process, ALJ is taking a collaborative approach with its agencies and with the teams at Google to produce a new season of Khebayyes & AbuHurayyes that is sure to once again break new grounds.
Distribution Strategy and Targeting Approach
The series included 20 episodes plus a teaser, which were exclusively hosted on YouTube. New episodes were launched sequentially every Thursday, the beginning of the Saudi weekend. To accompany this activity, the team launched a six months long TrueView ad campaign and three Masthead ads. The team used geographic and demographic targeting to reach the audience most likely to want to watch the series. Negative remarketing achieved reach as it ensured that an episode would not be promoted to a viewer who had seen it already, while positive remarketing achieved engagement, where it encouraged people who had engaged with the series already to view episodes they’d not yet watched.
Campaign Results
Thanks to the fact that ALJ worked very closely with its agencies and Google Creative and Sales teams, the partnership produced highly engaging local content, a strong media distribution strategy and a brilliant execution. The results exceeded expectations, overachieving on all KPIs for reach and engagement. The episodes reached 11.8 million unique users – which represents more than half of the entire online population of KSA – and gained 187 years’ worth of watch time! Thanks to the compelling content, the series gained vast popularity with an unusually high organic viewership (48%) and exceptional levels of engagement in the form of likes and shares. While some episodes were relatively long, the completion rate for the entire campaign was well above average at 57%. The ALJ YouTube channel went from almost zero to 194,000 subscribers, helped in part by the very successful Masthead campaign.
Into the Future
Based on these successes, the ALJ team is already working on a second season, taking on board feedback from users and the significant social interaction that the activity produced. The first request that the ALJ team will try to answer is to lengthen the episodes' duration from three to five minutes on average – the comments asking for longer episodes were overwhelming. Additionally, the ALJ team would like for the second season to be more interactive and related to actual social events so that fans can have better engagement. Going forward, starting from the ideation process, ALJ is taking a collaborative approach with its agencies and with the teams at Google to produce a new season of Khebayyes & AbuHurayyes that is sure to once again break new grounds.
Google Ad Grants
Google.org has a global, five-year goal to award $1 billion in grants and contribute 1 million employee volunteer hours. It works across education, economic opportunity, and inclusion and finds partners and programmes in different countries that will help people and businesses. Throughout this document some of the relevant programmes supported by Google have been highlighted.
Ad Grants connects people and nonprofits through free Google Ads. Its mission is to provide additional support and services to help nonprofits and causes, and encourage them in driving advertising results and greater social impact through high quality online advertising.
Using the targeted Ad Grants campaigns, hundreds of nonprofits can reach people who want to help those in need, and people looking for work, at the right time, and successfully move them to donate or apply.
Google Ad Grants have allocated $3 billion worth of free online advertising through in-kind Google Ads to over 27,000 organisations in 30 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
INJAZ Al-Arab
Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, granted $1 million USD to INJAZ Al-Arab, a regional nonprofit organization, which is rolling out in-person trainings to 100,000 students across 14 countries in MENA focusing on youth in underprivileged and rural areas.
Google Search and Ads have made it much easier for local and international customers to find Saudi Arabian companies
Helping businesses export
One of the biggest transformations of the internet is that businesses can reach anywhere across the globe. At the same time, it has made it easier for small businesses to compete with larger enterprises – meaning that organisations no longer have to commission expensive TV or print advertising campaigns, but can target customers much more clearly.
Tools like Google Ads, Analytics and Market Finder have made it much it much easier for businesses of any size to reach new customers wherever they are based. 82% of the businesses we spoke to agree that compared to the time before search engines, it was now far easier for global customers or clients to find their business.
Looking only at businesses who said that a majority of their customers came from abroad, 90% agreed that their business would have significantly fewer international clients without online search and online advertising.
Helping local customers find businesses
It is not just global customers that Google helps businesses reach, but local people too. Tools like Google Maps and Google My Business have made it easier for people locally, regionally, and nationally to find new businesses like restaurants and shops. This can be particularly important to those in out of the way locations.
In our consumer polling, we found that:
Local Business
Something New
Digital Workshop (Maharat)
A recent study by the World Economic Forum found that by 2020, 1 in 5 jobs in the Arab world will require digital skills that aren’t widely available today. 51% of youth consider unemployment their biggest concern and only 38% believe their education gives them the skills they need to enter the workforce. In MENA, more than 50% of university graduates are females, yet only 25% participate in the workforce.
To address the growing skills gap in the region’s workforce, and to help ensure that opportunities created by technology are available to everyone, Google launched Maharat min Google (the English translation is “Building Capabilities with Google”). It’s an initiative to help Arabic speakers, specifically women and young people, get ready for future job opportunities, advance their careers, or grow their businesses. Maharat min Google will provide free courses, tools and in-person digital skills training to students, educators, job seekers and businesses. The online platform includes over 100 lessons and explanatory videos covering a range of digital marketing skills including search engine marketing, social media, video, e-commerce and more. Since its launch, over 500,000 individuals (50% women) have been trained on digital skills and 1 in 4 individuals have found jobs, grew their business or their career.
Youth unemployment in the region is about 31% according to the latest World Economic Forum report, with about 27 million young people looking for work. Of that, about a third are university graduates. In April 2018, Google launched “Maharat Min Google”, a free digital platform offering online and face-to face learning, which is helping Arabic speakers to improve their job prospects. It teaches a range of skills, from how to build a website and boost their social media presence to how to market a business, all in Arabic. Hazem Al Bulooshi has a well-established marketing career but felt he needed to improve his digital skills to keep pace with a rapidly evolving workplace. Hazem Al Bulooshi has a well-established marketing career but felt he needed to improv“Just a quick look at today’s job descriptions and you realise digital skills are hugely needed,” Mr Al Bulooshi said. “Skills related to e-commerce were very important to me but I wasn’t aware of the majority of what’s now required. “Maharat Min Google went into details on how to use digital marketing methods to enter the world of e-commerce and what tools are available. “Arabs in general and Arab youths need to learn and understand how digital marketing can increase their chances and opportunities for success.” Research by the World Economic Forum showed that by 2020, one in five jobs in the Arab world will require digital skills. his digital skills to keep pace with a rapidly evolving workplace. Freelance marketer Sara Al Hussaini, from Saudi Arabia, was unsure how to make the most of what she knew. “I had a general knowledge of the tools available, but I never knew how to use them properly and didn’t know how to efficiently analyse data,” Ms Al Hussaini said. “Throughout my education and work experience, I have been learning and practising all things digital in English and it was a bit outdated. Doing this course has helped me to reflect all of this in Arabic.” By 2020, 21% of core skills in GCC countries and 41 per cent of those in Turkey will be different to the skills that were needed in 2015. So far, the most interest in learning digital skills in Arabic has come from users in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Abdullah is the Managing Director of Triggers, a digital agency. He is a marketing trainer with 15 years of experience. So far, Abdullah has trained over 2,500 Saudi youth (50% women) on “Maharat min Google” as well as made it standard for Triggers employees to earn the Maharat certificate as part of their onboarding path.
Google is helping create a more consumer centric Saudi Arabian economy
By increasing consumer transparency, Google is helping drive better customer service
By increasing transparency and choice, Search and other online tools have increased effective competition - leading to more productive companies and a better quality service for the end customer. In today’s economy, it is much harder for a business to get away with a poor quality good or service.
The people and companies we polled agree: 87% of shoppers think they make better purchasing decisions because of online information, and 86% of businesses think it is harder to get away with poor goods, food or service because of the internet.
This happens not only online, but offline too. 95% of search users say they use their phone to research a potential purchase in a shop in the last year. This allows them to avoid products which get poor reviews, and make sure they are paying a good price.
Helping small businesses compete and grow
Given their lower entry costs, internet tools are often particularly important for the productivity of small businesses. Anyone who wanted to start a large export business twenty years ago, would probably have to invest in an international advertising campaign, in-house IT servers and expensive software licences.
In our poll, out of businesses with less than 250 employees we saw:
Google makes it easier for new companies to compete with established firms
Free online tools, cloud computing, and the ability to communicate with customers across the globe have dramatically reduced the barriers to entry for start-ups, and made it easier for them to grow.
In our poll, out of businesses less than five years old we saw:
Flyin.com
The main drive behind establishing Flyin.com was our wish to develop the concept of traveling easily, comfortably and elegantly. This is why we have always strived to provide innovative online traveling solutions to travelers around the world, and Middle Eastern travelers especially. With the help of Google products, 95% of Flyin sales are attributed to online sales.
Google’s products are enabling entirely new types of business
For decades publishers, record labels, and TV producers have been besieged by requests from individuals wanting a chance to reach a wide audience. YouTube has provided many with an alternative - giving them a platform to communicate directly to people all over the world. While children used to dream of becoming a film or sports star when they grew up, an increasing number now say their dream is to become a YouTube vlogger.16
Worldwide, YouTube has a total audience of over 2 billion users, with over 500 hours of content uploaded every minute and one billion hours of content watched every day. This immense audience supports thousands of independent creators. The number of channels with more than one million subscribers has grown by more than 65% year on year, and the number of channels earning five figures per year more than 40% year on year.17
In Saudi Arabia, we estimate that YouTube is generating 80 million SAR for local YouTube creators.
YouTube Mosalsalat and YouTube Aflam
YouTube launched a hub called YouTube Mosalsalat which features more than 500 of the most iconic Arabic television series dating back to 1962 from across the Middle East and North Africa. Viewers can browse through more than 7,000 hours of Arabic series on YouTube, from any device, anywhere. The hub categorizes shows by year in an effort to make the search process for these shows simpler. YouTube also launched YouTube Aflam, a similar hub for Arabic films. Aflam currently features more than 1,000 movies and has had more than four million views since its launch.
YouTube Batala
YouTube launched a hub called YouTube Batala for female creators from the Middle East and North Africa which features more than 400 female creators from the region. The channel has more than 1,000 videos and is categorized by genres such as comedy, education, fitness, and many more.
YouTube Creators Academy
YouTube Creators Academy is an education platform which offers free online courses and lessons to help people understand how to use YouTube to reach people and make money.
YouTube Creators
Hatoon Kadi, YouTube Creator, UTURN Entertainment Noon Channel
YouTube provides creators with the freedom to express things they may not be able to anywhere else, through content types ranging from Travel and Lifestyle to Comedy and Gaming. Moreover, YouTube provides female content creators in the region with a megaphone to share their stories and forge their own paths while inspiring others to do the same. As a result, their audience connects with them in a distinctive and unique way, in fact, 4 in 10 millennial subscribers say their favorite creator understands them better than their friends. Hatoon Kadi is a mother of two and was one of the first online female comedy content creators. She uses her channel to communicate a women’s point of view of living in Saudi Arabia. Her first video had over 700,000 views and became a viral hit in the process. Now, Hatoon’s channel has garnered over 350 thousand subscribers and 33 million views across 65 videos.
Abdulla and Abdulaziz Bakr, YouTube Creators, The Saudi Reporters Channel
Abdulla and Abdulaziz, twin brothers from Saudi Arabia known as: The Saudi Reporters, their weekly show consists of comedic sketches, challenges, Q&A sessions, food tasting, science experiments, and travel vlogs. The Saudi Reporters started as a YouTube show back in 2010 presented by the Bakr brothers, Abdul Aziz and Abdullah. With their enthusiasm and the support of their audience, The Saudi Reporters is now one of the most powerful and influential YouTube channels in the region. It has more than 5.5 million subscribers and over 902 million views attracting audiences from all Arab countries with compelling, creative, and spontaneous YouTube content. The two brothers present a range of content including comedy sketches, challenges, experiments, and travel vlogs. Their content is uniquely humorous and popular, especially amongst the teenage demographic in the Arab world.
Raneem Al Muhandis, YouTube Creator, Raneem Al Muhandis Channel
Raneem Al Muhandis is a YouTube Creator based in Saudi Arabia. She started her YouTube channel in 2017 to fulfill her ultimate goal—to empower a generation of believers to go ahead and achieve their dreams. She combines her passion in filmmaking with art to create videos that represent her inspirational messages. She’s been recognized for her motivational messages with invitations to speak at such events like IGNITE and TEDx. She was selected as a YouTube Creator for Change as well as the winner of Forsaty, a creator competition by Unilever in partnership with YouTube. Throughout her journey on YouTube, which started in August 2011, Raneem reached over 26 million viewers and over 220 thousand subscribers through 43 videos.
Njoud Al Shammari, YouTube Creator, Njood Channel
For content creators like Njoud Al Shammari, Saudi lifestyle and comedy vlogger with 1.75 million viewers, Ramadan is a key period to connect with an engaged audience. She is the first Saudi female creator to cross a million subscribers with videos that range from comedy and makeup tips to funny tutorials. The majority of Njoud’s audience (60%) is made up of females in Saudi Arabia, over 50% of which are aged between 13-24. Third party research shows that Njoud scored the highest on the Tubular Influencer Score (TIS) making her Saudi Arabia’s Most Influential Female on YouTube. The report takes into account 10 different metrics when generating the rankings such as: the creator’s reach, engagement with viewers and subscribers, and the channel’s activity. Results revealed that the top influential female creators on YouTube make content that's nearly 5 times more engaging than average video.
Aljuhara Sajer, YouTube Creator, JaySajer Channel
Six years after starting her channel, with over half a million subscribers and over 55 million views, Aljuhara Sajer has become a role model for others who are seeing YouTube as a place of opportunity and community. Being amongst the first female creators in the region, Aljuhara Sajer shifted cultural expectation in the early stages of her YouTube channel JaySajer. She has never let adversity keep her from creating the next video, which has garnered a devoted fan base of over half a million subscribers. Aljuhara Sajer is a Saudi beauty vlogger who pushes cultural boundaries by sharing her lifestyle through YouTube. Aljuhara currently has over 55 million views to her main channel and hopes to inspire young girls in the region.
The majority of her YouTube videos fall into the beauty, fashion and lifestyle genres. For her most dedicated audience, Al-Juhara’s travel vlogging channel “Travel with Jay” gives viewers a glimpse into her travel experiences. As she grew in confidence as a YouTuber, she began to tackle topics beyond fashion and beauty. She shares an authentic, honest approach about social issues in a segment titled “TeaTime”, her candid approach has gained her a loyal and supportive fanbase.
Mohamed Moshaya, YouTube Creator, Mmoshaya Channel
Mohamed Moshaya runs the top followed Family YouTube channel in the Arab world titled “Mmoshaya”. Mohamed reaches an audience of over 14 million viewers. Along with his three children as his co-stars, he shares film sketches, challenges and entertainment content with parents and children around the region. Mmoshaya’s channel recently crossed the 7.8 billion views milestone across over 880 videos!
Anas Iskander, YouTube Creators, Anas Iskander Channel
Anas Iskander has over 2.55 million subscribers and over 170 million views on his YouTube channel. He is mainly a travel vlogger, but also make some lifestyle content. His content is informative, beautifully filmed and fun as he shares helpful travel tips and travel guides of the countries he visits. Anas’ content tends to be facts-based, he tends to highlight lesser known aspects of the destinations he features. He’s shared his experience with exploring Dubai on a budget, trying the fastest Internet in Korea, and trekking the Great Wall of China.
Google launched The Lantern Award to celebrate the region’s most engaging and creative Ramadan and Eid el Fitr YouTube campaigns. Tailored to all of MENA’s advertisers, creative and media agencies, The Lantern Award offers contenders the opportunity to showcase their work by bringing to life creatives that move audiences on YouTube. The winning entries will be ones which show how their use of YouTube has generated the greatest amount of engagement amongst viewers during the period of Ramadan and Eid. Google launched Think with Google - MENA, a free educational platform and newsletter covering Marketing Research & Digital Trends. Several businesses in Saudi Arabia are highlighted on the platform.
The economic impact of Android development
Android is the world’s most popular app platform, helping ensure that it is never been easier for app or game developers to deploy and market to customers worldwide.
Globally,
over 5.9 million developers target Android first.18
In total, the Google Play store offers around 2.7 million apps to download,19 with over
75 billion apps downloaded globally from the Google Play store in 2018.20The average
consumer in advanced economies regularly uses over 30 apps, with just under 100
apps installed on their smartphone.21
Google Developer Training
Google Developer Groups (GDGs) are local groups of developers who are specifically interested in Google products and APIs. Each local group is called a GDG chapter and can host a variety of technical activities for developers - from just a few people getting together to watch our latest videos, to large gatherings with demos and tech talks, to hackathons. One of the core programs GDG cover is Google's Women Techmakers program which provides visibility, community, and resources for women in technology.
Google helps workers be more productive, learn new skills and develop their careers
Google helps workers be more productive
In the last five years, Saudi Arabian companies report significant increased adoption of the use of email, smartphones, search engines, online maps, and online office suites - and they expect this adoption to only increase in the next five years.
Usage of internet technologies over time
Like the PC and the spreadsheet a generation before, arguably the most important personal productivity tools of the last generation have been the smartphone and the search engine:
- Online workers were more likely to use Google Search in an average week for their work than a laptop, desktop computer, Microsoft Office or car.
- 60% of online workers agreed that search engines make their work easier and take less time
It is not just Search. A previous Forrester Consulting study estimated that the deployment of G Suite and tools like Docs, Sheets and Slides had the potential to save employees 15 minutes to 2 hours per week in more efficient collaboration.22
The
employers we spoke to agreed that the internet has increased productivity and
enabled new styles of working:
Increasingly, many companies are turning to cloud providers such as Google Cloud to enable them to grow seamlessly.
On average, businesses have seen a net return of up to $2.5 for every $1 invested in cloud services, with some of the most successful users on Google Cloud seeing returns of up $10 for every $1 invested. In total, Deloitte estimates have found that Google Cloud has increased productivity in Saudi Arabia by 7 SAR mn.23
Given the
significant number of workers and businesses who in our polling said they now
used and relied on Google products, this is likely to be substantial. As a rough estimate, we estimate that
Google Search and G Suite alone could be creating at least 4.0 SAR billion a
year in business time savings for the Saudi Arabian economy.24
Protecting businesses online with leading security
While the internet has enabled new opportunities for businesses to save time and money, it has also created the potential for new types of risk from data breaches or loss. One recent business survey found that 28% of small businesses in the US had suffered a data loss in the last twelve months, with 69% of those forced offline for a limited period and 10% forced into bankruptcy.25
Protecting businesses online with leading security
Security features are built into all of Google’s products, services, and infrastructure to keep data protected, and Google has dedicated teams and technology to continually improve that security.
Defense in depth
The security of Google’s infrastructure was designed in layers that build upon one another, from the physical security of data centres to the security protections of hardware and software to the processes used to support operational security. This layered protection creates a strong security foundation for everything Google does.
- Physical security to protect data integrity: Google distributes data across multiple data centres, so that in the event of a fire or disaster, it can be automatically shifted to stable and protected locations. Each of those data centres is monitored and protected 24/7, and access is tightly controlled with measures like biometric identification and laser-based surveillance.
- Custom hardware with security at its core: Security starts in hardware. Google created processes to help ensure the security of its hardware, including vetting the vendors they work with, designing custom chips, and taking measures to identify and authenticate legitimate Google devices. This foundation allows the delivery of security at every level.
- Encryption to keep data private and protected: Encryption brings an even higher level of security and privacy to Google’s services. As the data created moves between your device, Google services, and data centres, it is protected by security technology like HTTPS and Transport Layer Security. Google also encrypts email at rest and in transit by default, and encrypt identity cookies by default.
- Processes for secure operations: Google uses security monitoring to protect users from malware. Applications are constantly monitored and patches are deployed through automated network analysis and proprietary technology. This allows Google to detect and respond to threats to protect products from spam, malware, viruses, and other forms of malicious code.
- Google actively scans to find vulnerabilities: Google scans for software vulnerabilities, using a combination of commercially available and purpose-built in-house tools, intensive automated and manual penetration testing, quality assurance processes, software security reviews, and external audits.
- Google designs with security in mind: Google’s security and privacy experts work with development teams, reviewing code and ensuring products utilize strong security protections.
- Strong controls to limit access to trusted personnel: Google limits access to users’ business’ data to Google personnel who need it to do their jobs; for example, when a customer service agent assists a user in managing their data. Strong access controls are enforced by organizational and technical safeguards. And Google works with third parties, like customer support vendors, to provide Google services, an assessment is conducted to ensure they provide the appropriate level of security and privacy needed to receive access to data.
- Incident management to resolve threats quickly: Google’s security team works 24/7 to quickly detect, resolve, and notify the appropriate individuals of security incidents. The security incident management program is structured around industry best practices and tailored into the "Incident Management at Google (IMAG)" program, which is built around the unique aspects of Google and its infrastructure. Incident response plans are regularly tested, so Google always remains prepared.
Google helps people get more done while on the go
From podcasts to apps, streaming videos to gaming, the rise of the smartphone has helped make travelling far more entertaining for many people - but often more productive too. Rather than wait to get back to your desk to look up a crucial piece of information or respond to an urgent message, we are now able to act much more in the moment.
In our polling, we saw many ways in which Saudis were using their smartphone to remain productive while on the go:
- Looking up information. 96% of Search users regularly use it to answer a question while on the go.
- Managing work. 94% of Android users regularly use their phone to answer their work email or do other work while on the go.
- Help from getting lost. 94% of Android users regularly use Google Maps to navigate around their destination whilst on holiday or a business trip.
Google is helping workers upskill and find new jobs
Helping people find jobs and grow in their career
For over a hundred years, an important goal of public policy has been to help match workers with the right jobs, and once in work, train and improve their skills.
By making it easier to research different options, search engines such as Google Search help improve consumer choice, transparency and competition.
One of the most important markets in which this is true is the labour market. Google Search is increasingly the leading gateway through which workers look for a new position and, once there, seek to improve their skills.
Every year:
This is particularly true of younger workers. 79% of 18-24 year old Search users and 83% of 25-34 year old Search users say they use it at least once a year to look for a new job, and 83% and 86% respectively to get advice on their CV.
In September 2018, Google launched their Jobs search feature in Egypt. When you search for “jobs near me”, “teaching jobs”, or similar queries you can go to a feature that lets you explore jobs from across the web that meet your needs. The results will include details under each job position like its exact location, the date it was posted, and details about the role by the employer.
Google collaborated with 11 job portals that have a local and regional coverage including Emploitic, Novojob, Rekrute, WUZZUF, Forasna, Bayt, Jobzella, Wzayef, Akhtaboot, Laimoon, and GulfTalent to launch the feature, and all jobs providers can make their job openings discoverable in this experience. Anyone searching for jobs on Google will see postings from these sites and many others from across the web as soon as they’re posted.
Helping managers learn more at work
Like their workforce, business owners and managers are also increasingly turning to Google products to stay on top of trends and opportunities, be aware of what their competitors are doing, and constantly improve their own practices and management.
In our business poll, we found that at least once a month:
In the future, AI will enable workers to be even more productive
In its first twenty years, the majority of value created by Google services came from improved access to information and communication. In the next twenty years, as important is likely to be the value created by the application of AI and machine learning to automate routine tasks is likely to be just as important. Google’s CEO has argued that the company is set to move from “a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done.”26
As industry adapts to the next wave of technologies - big data, AI, and advanced robotics - we find that companies across Saudi Arabia have already incorporated internet technology into their daily operations, decision making, sales and marketing.
50% of Saudi Arabian businesses expect data science and machine learning to be used by a majority of their workers within the next five years.
While it is hard to predict the future reach of a specific company, we can more confidently predict the potential of AI and the digital industry for the economy as a whole.
In total, our estimates suggest that AI has the potential to boost the economy in Saudi Arabia by 16.34% by 2030, boosting average growth rates by an average 1.49 percentage points a year. That is the equivalent of an additional 43.6 SAR bn in GDP, or an additional 1299 SAR per Saudi, each and every year.
As well as boosting living standards, AI is also likely to make work itself more pleasant - freeing up time for employees to spend on more creative or meaningful tasks.
As one example of this, the average employee in Saudi Arabia today spends over three quarters of an hour a day in administrative tasks, such as filling out paperwork, submitting expenses or booking a meeting room.
Through products such as Assistant and Duplex, Google has already demonstrated technology that can suggest standard email replies, find a suitable slot for a meeting or book an appointment.
If we could use AI to take over just 10% of
the average worker’s administrative tasks, it would save them the equivalent of
15 hours in work time a year – and by itself boost productivity by 1.0%.
Google is committed to helping people learn and stay safe online
Enabling life-long learning
We found that the majority of Saudis, whatever age, are using Search to find new information, helping create a culture of lifelong learning: 81% of Search users say they are more likely to look something up when they are unsure about it than when before search engines existed. 93% of Search users research a topic at least once a month.
We saw this increased culture of learning right across the age range. A majority of Search users used Google Search and YouTube at least once a week to learn something new.
Google Arts and Culture
Google Arts & Culture is an online platform through which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative's partner museums.
Google Arts & Culture puts over a 1,500 museums at your fingertips. It’s a free, immersive way to explore art, history and wonders of the world from Van Gogh’s bedroom paintings to Mandela’s prison cell. The Google Arts & Culture app is free and available on the web, on iOS and Android. The Google Cultural Institute partnered with more than 1,500 institutions from 70 countries, giving a platform to over 400,000 artworks and a total of 6 million photos, videos, manuscripts and other documents of art, culture and history. The Art Camera is a robotic camera custom-made to create the highest possible resolution images of paintings. The camera is capable of taking “gigapixel” images, which are more than 1000 megapixels. The Art Camera has created over 2,000 ultra-high resolution images of artworks around the world.
% Using product to learn something at least once a week.
Google Scholar: access to the world’s best research
From science and history to economics, Google Scholar helps people access research and knowledge. It is a simple way to search for academic literature across sectors and disciplines: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Some studies have found Google Scholar to have both better sources and to be more usable than other methods of finding academic papers.27
Keeping people safe online
Promoting safety and security online
While the internet has brought many benefits to Saudi users, many people we spoke were also worried about potential risks and thought more tools to help keep their families safe would be helpful.
In our polling:
In response, online Saudis already claimed to be following a wide variety of steps in order to ensure their internet safety, including installing a firewall, regularly changing their passwords, turning on two factor authentication and limiting the hours they spend on an electronic device.
Have you taken the following steps to increase your own or your family's online safety?
Nevertheless, many online Saudis also believed that further support would be helpful:
In order to help Saudi children stay safe on the internet, Google itself has launched Abtal Al Internet (English translation: “Internet Heroes”, a programme designed to teach children the fundamentals of digital citizenship and safety in Arabic. So far, over 30,000 students, parents and teachers have been trained on internet safety through the Abtal Al Internet program.
Abtal Al Internet
Google announced the launch of “Abtal Al Internet” (English translation is “Internet Heroes”), a multifaceted program designed to teach children the fundamentals of digital citizenship and safety in Arabic. “Abtal Al Internet” provides a range of resources and online activities for children, educators and parents to encourage digital safety and citizenship. The online platform — g.co/abtalinternet — focuses on five key fundamentals to help children navigate the online world with confidence by learning how to be smart, alert, strong, kind and brave online. The program also includes “A’lam Al Internet” (English translation is “Interland”), an online adventure which reflects the fundamentals of digital safety into hands-on practice for children to learn about online reputation, phishing and scams, privacy and security, online harassment and reporting inappropriate content. Google surveyed teachers in the Arab world to learn about their experience with online safety in the classroom. According to research, the majority of teachers believe children should start learning about online safety at home, and 98% of teachers believe that online safety should be part of the curriculum. One in three teachers reported that they had witnessed an online safety incident (sharing personal information or cyberbullying, for example) in their school. However, 84% of them said they do not have the necessary resources to teach online safety to their students. Several schools in Saudi Arabia have adopted the Abtal Al Internet curriculum within their classroom including Al Hussan International School Jubail, Ibn Majid School Yanbu, Saudi Institute of Madrid and many more.
Controlling who sees your data
Google has made it easier for users to make decisions about their data directly within its services. For example, without leaving Search, users can review and delete recent search activity, get quick access to relevant privacy controls from their Google Account, and learn more about how Search works with their data.
Auto-delete settings lets users choose a time limit for how long they want to keep their activity data. Data older than the chosen limit will be continuously and automatically deleted from a user’s account. This makes it easy for users to set it and forget it, but with an option to go back and update these settings at any time.
How parents keep their children safe online
Google has a number of features designed to give parents control over their childrens’ screen time. Activity reports show how much time they’re spending on particular apps. Notifications also allow responsible adults to block apps and manage any purchases.
Google’s feature Family Link also allows parents and carers to set limits on screen time; bed times; and to lock devices. If parents are ever worried about their child’s whereabouts you can use Family Link to locate their device.
If parents are ever worried about their child’s whereabouts you can use Family Link to locate their device.
Calculating the overall impact of Google
How can we estimate the total impact created by digital products and services like Google on the Saudi Arabian economy, society and standard of living?
Traditional economic impact studies have tended to focus on the impact of a company or product on GDP. GDP itself, however, has never included everything we value or every type of work we do. Taken literally, GDP takes no account of changes in our leisure time or the amount of work we do in non-market roles, such as housework or family care.
For the most part, this hasn’t mattered too much - there is reasonable evidence that GDP is highly correlated with other things that we care about, such as a clean environment or overall happiness. GDP might not measure all that mattered, but it made a reasonable stand-in.
If there is one thing that is striking about the digital economy to an
economist, however, it is how much of it is free. The world’s seven most
popular websites - Google, YouTube, Facebook, Baidu, Wikipedia, Reddit and
Yahoo!28– are all
offered without charge. As many estimates have calculated, the modern
smartphone replaces what once would have been dozens of separate devices
costing thousands of euros, including phone, camera, video camera, games
console, alarm clock, map, satnav, book, television, DVD player, Walkman,
stopwatch, torch, debit card, compact mirror, step tracker, portable speaker
and compass.
At the same
time, as we have explored throughout this paper, digital services are
increasingly both saving us time in our non-market work - making it easier to
do housework or DIY - and substituting for jobs that once we might have paid
someone to do for us, such as booking a flight or holiday, and enabling new
types of careers.
The
combination of a lack of prices and the fact that many digital services are a
completely new type of good - there is no real non digital equivalent to a
search engine - makes it much more challenging for economists and statisticians
to estimate how much they matter to consumers.
Nevertheless, economists have developed multiple methods that allow us to estimate how much value – or consumer surplus – is created by unpriced goods, which in this paper we have applied in turn to Google’s products, including:
- Using time or attention as a proxy for the cost we are prepared to pay for digital goods. Money is not the only cost we have to pay to use a good or service – our time is valuable too. Over the last decade, the time we spend per day on smartphones has rapidly increased. This time carries a significant opportunity cost of everything else we could be doing either for leisure or our job – suggesting that we must find the digital service at least as valuable as the alternative.
- Asking individuals to estimate the amount they would be hypothetically willing to pay for a free service – or alternatively, what they would be willing to accept to give it up. For decades, economists and social scientists have experimented with the best way to ask individuals about their preferences over unpriced goods, such as a natural park or clean air. When designed right, these surveys can deliver surprisingly accurate results. In the future, the arrival of new mass online polling solutions such as Google Consumer Surveys and big data enabled by the internet could potentially allow us to significantly improve the accuracy, speed and reliability of our economic statistics – allowing us to better measure what as individuals we really care about.
- Comparing preferences for a free good against another good which has a price attached. Finally, rather than try and construct a hypothetical price – something we rarely do in real life – we often find it easier to compare between different items: would people rather give up their washing machine or dishwasher? By comparing items with prices to those that are unpriced, we can produce a ranking, and bracket how valuable the free good must be.
While we have tried to directly estimate the time saved by Google services whenever possible, on other occasions we have had to rely on stated preferences, as has long been common practice in other areas where valuation is challenging, such as environmental economics. These estimates work by asking individuals whether they would be prepared to lose access to a particular product for varying amounts of money - and assuming that if they reject this deal, the service must be worth at least that amount. Other research has found that these kinds of estimates give a reasonably reliable estimate of the value created by digital services (see Box) - with survey respondents providing similar responses even when there is a real, non-hypothetical risk of losing access if they did not provide an accurate estimate.
As a sense check, we also asked our polling recipients to rank Search, YouTube and their smartphone against other consumer goods by which they would most want to avoid giving up - finding that, on average, internet connected Saudis would rather lose access to public transport or TV than their smartphone or a search engine.
Another question might be what we are measuring against: if Google didn’t exist, how would the world look different? Presumably another search engine would be the market leader - but how would its quality differ? Given the scale of the consumer surplus we found, an alternative only 10% worse would lead to significant reductions in consumer welfare. For the most part, in our polling we always asked those we surveyed the value of a specific Google product rather than a generic category - leaving them the hypothetical option to switch to a competitor even if they lost access to Google’s product. This makes our study different from many of the other studies that have been done on the value of digital products, and given the high values we found, suggest that many people significantly value Google’s services.
In total,
our estimates suggest that a conservative
estimate of the total consumer surplus created by Google services in Saudi
Arabia is 118 SAR
billion a year or around 1744 SAR
per year for the median person. We believe this work supports the growing
evidence in the literature that digital services are creating significant
unmeasured value for ordinary findings. While our estimate is already a large
number, other studies have found that
the value of online search as a whole could be as high as $15,600 per person a
year.29
Other estimates of the consumer value created by the digital economy
Depending on their methodology and assumptions, the estimates of the value produced by the online economy can vary by many orders of magnitude. In general, however, even the more modest estimates find that online services are creating significant surplus value beyond what their users directly pay.
Goolsbee and Klenow’s paper Valuing Consumer Products by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet (2006) uses the opportunity cost of the leisure time spent on the Internet to estimate a total consumer surplus equivalent to $3,000 on average in the US.
McKinsey’s report The Web’s €100 billion surplus (2011)30used stated preference methods to calculate the total consumer surplus created by online services, netting off consumers preference to avoid advertising or sharing their data. Their estimates found that search created a monthly consumer surplus equivalent to €3.1, for email €3.2, maps €1.1 and video €0.9.
Brynjolfsson and Oh’s paper The
Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Digital Services on the Internet
(2012)31 updated
the methodology of Goolsbee and Klenow (2006) to account for that the Internet
might simply be substituting for watching TV, finding that free online sites
create the equivalent of around $500 per person in consumer surplus.
Brynjolfsson, Eggers and Gannameni’s paper Using Massive Online Choice Experiments to
Measure Changes in Well-Being (2017) used online surveys to test both willingness
to accept compensation in place of digital goods and to create a ranking of
different goods. They find significantly higher numbers, with a consumer
surplus for search the equivalent of $17,500 a year, for email $8,400, maps
$3,600 and video $1,170. In order to test the reliability of these hypothetical
numbers, they run a smaller scale experiment where they actually make some
people go through with giving up the online service – and find this creates
little change in valuation. In addition, they run a ranking experiment, and
find that giving up search engines, email and smartphones are all ranked
somewhere between the equivalent of losing $500 to $1000 a year.
Methodology
As described in the main report, accurately estimating the value created by digital products is extremely challenging – and this is particularly true for products that are offered without monetary charge, are used widely across the economy, and contain elements of both consumption and production, as is true for many Google products.
While we believe our estimates are based on conservative assumptions, it is worth being aware of their limitations:
- Many of our estimates are based on the gross impact of Google’s products, as it is hard to accurately quantify what a counterfactual world without Google would look like.
- Conversely, in some cases we have not been able to fully quantify all the impacts created by Google products, suggesting that our estimates should be viewed as a lower bound.
- Many of our estimates make use of new polling carried out for this report – but as in any poll, consumers may underestimate or overestimate their use of products. (Full polling tables for data used in this report are available in an online appendix.)
- Best practice in many of these areas, such as valuing an hour of leisure time or using stated preferences to calculate consumer surplus, remains an area of active academic debate.
- Google did not provide any new or internal data to generate these estimates. All our modelling is based on third-party or public data, alongside our own internal estimates.
Consumer Benefits
Google Search
Our headline estimate of the total consumer surplus of Google Search is calculated as the geometric average of:
- Time saved. Following the methodology of Varian (2011), we assume that using Google saves 15 minutes per question, with the average person asking 1 answerable question every 2 days. Time saved is valued at the self-reported polling data of average incomes, and we scale the overall estimate by third party estimates of Internet prevalence and polling information on Google Search usage. (More information on this overall approach can be found in the Economic Value of Google, a presentation by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian.)
- Stated preference (Willingness to Accept). As part of our polling, we asked participants a single discrete binary choice question of “Would you prefer to keep access to Google Search or go without access to Google Search for one month and get paid [Price]” with the price offered randomised between 3 SAR, 6 SAR, 11 SAR, 23 SAR, 45 SAR, 113 SAR, 225 SAR, 450 SAR and 1125 SAR. We linearly regressed the results of this poll to derive a demand curve and used this to calculate total consumer surplus per user. Finally, we scaled this estimate by third party estimates of Internet prevalence and polling information on Google Search usage.
Following Brynjolfsson et al (2017), we chose a Willingness to Accept (WTA) rather than Willingness to Pay format for our Stated Preference question as we believed this best matched the status quo, given that the majority of Google Services are offered without monetary charge.
As with many other products, the mean consumer surplus is significantly higher than the median – or, in other words, a few dedicated users use it disproportionately more than the average.
In order to ensure that our household level figures were not misleading, we based them not on the mean household value for WTA compensation, but instead a separate estimate of the median WTA. We derived this by regressing our polling data again, using an exponential method which we judged was more likely to accurately represent the bottom of the distribution.
Google Maps
Our headline estimate of the total consumer surplus of Google Maps is calculated as the geometric average of:
- Time saved. We calculate time saved by Google Maps, using estimates of time saved by advanced traveler information systems from Levinson (2003) and total time spent travelling by mode from our polling, calibrated by Saudi Arabian Labour Force Survey data on the total time spent commuting. Time saved is valued at 37.5% of the estimated hourly income of Google Maps users, following standard practice for calculating the value of travel time savings.
- Stated preference. As with Google Search, we asked the participants of our poll a single discrete binary choice question of “Would you prefer to keep access to Google Maps or go without access to Google Maps for one month and get paid [Price]” with the price offered randomised between 3 SAR, 6 SAR, 11 SAR, 23 SAR, 45 SAR, 113 SAR, 225 SAR, 450 SAR and 1125 SAR. We linearly regressed the results of this poll to derive a demand curve and used this to calculate total consumer surplus per user. Finally, we scaled this estimate by third party estimates of Internet prevalence and polling information on Google Maps usage. In addition, we constructed a separate estimate of the median WTA compensation for losing Google Maps which we used for our per person and household estimates.
YouTube
Our headline estimate of the total consumer surplus of Google Search is calculated as the geometric average of:
- Time saved. Extrapolating from the methodology Varian (2011), we assume that using YouTube saves 11 minutes per question, using self-reporting polling data to calibrate the number of questions asked. Time saved is valued at the self-reported polling data of average incomes, and we scale the overall estimate by third party estimates of Internet prevalence and polling information on YouTube usage.
- Stated preference (Willingness to Accept). As part of our polling, we asked participants a single discrete binary choice question of “Would you prefer to keep access to YouTube or go without access to YouTube for one month and get paid [Price]” with the price offered randomised between 3 SAR, 6 SAR, 11 SAR, 23 SAR, 45 SAR, 113 SAR, 225 SAR, 450 SAR and 1125 SAR. We linearly regressed the results of this poll to derive a demand curve and used this to calculate total consumer surplus per user. Finally, we scaled this estimate by third party estimates of Internet prevalence and polling information on YouTube usage.
Business Benefits
Google Ads
Following the precedent of past Google impact reports, we use third-party data to estimate the total size of the Saudi Arabian Google Ads market, combining PWC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook data on the total Saudi Arabian paid search market with other estimates of Google’s market share. The lower estimate relies solely on the PWC estimate of the Saudi Arabian paid search market, whereas the higher estimate also takes into account a bottom-up estimating based on average cost per click and number of ads.
Following the methodology of the US Google Economic Impact Report, we then scale this revenue by an assumed Return on Investment (ROI) factor of 8, from:
- Varian (2009) estimates that businesses make on average $2 for every $1 they spend of AdWords.
- Jansen and Spink (2009) estimate that businesses receive 5 clicks on their search results for every 1 click on their ads.
- Google estimates that search clicks are about 70% as valuable as ad clicks.
- Total ROI is then 2 * spend + 70% * 5 * 2 * spend – spend = 8 (spend).
More information on this methodology is available at https://economicimpact.google.com/methodology/
AdSense
In order to estimate total Saudi Arabian Adsense revenues, we scale Google’s 2019 global Traffic Acquisition Costs to network members by Saudi Arabia’s share of global display spending, derived from PWC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook data.
YouTube
In order to estimate total Saudi revenues to Saudi creators, we combine:
- Google’s reported global YouTube advertising revenue in 2019
- PWC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook data on total Saudi video advertising revenue as a share of the global total
- Sandvine data on YouTube’s 2017 share of EMEA video bandwidth
· AdStage data on YouTube CPC and CTRs
We then further scale this by an assumed conservative ROI factor.
Android
We scale App Annie 2019 data on worldwide Android app store consumer spend and Android revenue share by Caribou Digital (2016)’s estimate of the Saudi Arabian share of total app store value captured, and a 70% revenue share for the developers. We then scale this by the ratio between app store revenue and total revenue, including consultancy work, derived from Card and Mulligan (2014).
AI
We draw on McKinsey Global Institute (2017) estimates of the proportion of automatable jobs in Saudi Arabia, and conservatively assume that combined software and hardware costs for automated task converge to 10% of the cost of human labour. Next, we assume that automation takes place over 50 years, following a logistic S-curve, with Saudi Arabian state of adoption proxied by its current lag in internet adoption with the US.
In order to estimate the potential impact on administrative tasks, we draw on polling data on average time spent on administrative work.
- Internet Trends 2019, Mary Meeker, Bond, https://www.bondcap.com/report/itr19/#view/9
- Author calculation derived from https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf
- Number of SKUs at a standard supermarket from https://www.fmi.org/our-research/supermarket-facts; number of SKUs from an online retailer from https://www.scrapehero.com/number-of-products-on-amazon-april-2019/; YouTube uploads from https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/
- Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers, Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, Michael D. Smith, 2003
- Including Google Economic Impact (US, 2019, Google), Google’s Impact in the UK: At Home, At School At Work (UK, 2018, Public First), Google’s Economic Impact (Canada, 2018, Deloitte),Google Economic and Social Impact (New Zealand, 2017, AlphaBeta), Google Economic and Social Impact (Australia, 2015, AlphaBeta) and Google’s Economic Impact: United Kingdom (UK, 2014, Deloitte)
- For our full methodology, see the appendix at the end of this report
- https://www.wttc.org/about/media-centre/press-releases/press-releases/2019/travel-and-tourism-crucial-to-saudi-arabias-economy/
- http://saudigazette.com.sa/article/550005
- https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS#
- Economic Value of Google, Hal Varian
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/data/youtube-viewership-statistics/
- Using Massive Online Choice Experiments to Measure Changes in Well-Being, Brynjolfsson, Eggers and Gannameni, 2017
- The Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Digital Services on the Internet, Brynjolfsson and Oh, 2012, https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=icis2012
- https://economicimpact.google.com/methodology/
- For our full methodology, see the appendix at the end of this report
- See, for example here or here.
- https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/ and https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/
- https://evansdata.com/press/viewRelease.php?pressID=244
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-available-applications-in-the-google-play-store/
- Store Intelligence Data Digest Q4 and Full Year 2018, Sensor Tower
- The State of Mobile 2019, App Annie
- The Total Economic Impact of Google Apps for Work, Forrester Consulting, 2015
- Public First calculation based on Economic and social impacts of Google Cloud, Deloitte, September 2018
- Based upon our polling, assuming half of Saudi Arabian workers use Google Search on a weekly basis, and 20% of workers use G Suite. Based upon work by Forrester Consulting, we assume each user of G Suite saves between 15 minutes and 2 hours each a week. We conservatively assume that workers research one question through Google Search a week, and that this saves them 15 minutes. Total time saved is converted into a monetary amount using Saudi Arabian average output per hour. https://staysafeonline.org/small-business-target-survey-data/
- https://staysafeonline.org/small-business-target-survey-data/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyRPyRKHO8M&feature=youtu.be
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/20865386?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://pdfs.semanticscholar. org/7dab/41504f61a8f85fc83c26e6700aad34a251c5.pdf 2
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites
- Using Massive Online Choice Experiments to Measure Changes in Well-Being, Brynjolfsson, Eggers and Gannameni, 2017
- The Web’s €100 billion surplus, McKinsey, 2011, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/media-and-entertainment/our-insights/the-webs--and-8364100- billion-surplus
- The Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Digital Services on the Internet, Brynjolfsson and Oh, 2012, https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=icis2012