Ahmed Bahgat, CEO, Outsite Billboards.Egyptians have a strong affinity for out-of-home (OOH) media, and data consistently shows high engagement with outdoor campaigns. For the millions of citizens who spend a significant portion of their day commuting, OOH media provides an entertaining experience on the road.
Marketers in the real estate and FMCG sectors report that OOH advertisements yield higher conversion rates, indicating that Egyptian audiences place more trust in digital and static out-of-home than other advertising channels.
Egypt’s OOH industry stands as the largest in the MENA region. Despite the notable scarcity of market information, the sector’s true scale far surpasses general expectations, with figures significantly higher than those observed elsewhere in the region.
Numbers don’t lie
As of Q3 of 2025, Greater Cairo’s OOH advertising industry is thriving. Statistics from MOOH Media Intelligence reveal the existence of more than 13,000 advertising faces at more than 9,500 locations across 34 districts. This expansive network supports over 1,200 advertisers promoting more than 1,600 brands through more than 2,600 campaigns.
An average campaign in Egypt deploys about 50 hi-format ad faces, while big campaigns easily go over 200. All these numbers reflect the fierce competition over the more than 26 million Egyptians living in the metropolitan area of Greater Cairo, a city with a $292bn GDP, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).
Go bold … or go home
In this sleepless city, the constant hum of engines is a 24-hour symphony of productivity. With hundreds of millions of ad reaches per week, brands are confident in their audience engagement.
This allows marketers to prioritise OOH among other media channels, since delivering the highest conversion also guarantees higher return on advertising spending (ROAS), according to both global and local brands.
Experienced marketers in Egypt understand that to make a significant impact, a bold approach is essential. Large budgets allocated to OOH advertising enable extensive coverage across multiple districts, using significant advertising spaces.
Consequently, a low-profile strategy is risky and ineffective for brand building and sales. In the minds of Egyptian consumers, OOH media is equivalent to ‘big advertising’ or ‘big campaigns’ – when they see a brand on a large outdoor billboard, it signals the brand’s importance and its commitment to an OOH campaign.
A radical change in OOH advertising
Cairo is undergoing rapid changes, with the new capital expanding the Greater Cairo metropolitan area and adding a whole new road network. As a result, the media landscape has significantly shifted from 2024 to 2025.
During this period, the number of advertisers has grown by 14 per cent, brands on billboards increased by 18 per cent, and advertising campaigns risen by 17 per cent. OOH advertising locations have expanded by 38 per cent, accompanied by a 46 per cent increase in the number of ad faces.
DOOH is trending up, vastly
The digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising market is also experiencing continuous growth, largely driven by the preferences of Gen Z. According to Harris Poll and JCDecaux, 80 per cent of Gen Z consider DOOH to be the most favourable advertising format, contributing to the increasing presence of digital advertising screens.
Savvy marketers strategically leverage DOOH to enhance their presence and target specific audiences through geo-planning. For instance, brands within the real estate sector, which used to show a clear preference for high-format static OOH, nowadays have reached an average daily expenditure of $64,000 on DOOH advertising, according to MOOH.
Things in OOH are not as they used to be, even budgets
The expansion of the city has significantly impacted the digital/static and out-of-home landscape, placing a greater burden on advertisers to increase their budgets to match this growth. This has led to the highest spending in the last three years.
According to MOOH, during the first three quarters of 2025, the real estate industry has led the spending on OOH advertising with more than $28m. Following at a distance, the telecom industry has spent almost $10m, while FMCG has exceeded $8m. Automotive brands have spent more than $7.3m, and the banking sector has contributed more than $6.4m.
Sahel takes over the summer
Alongside Greater Cairo, the North Coast – Sahel – provides another competitive scene for digital/static out-of-home media, albeit seasonally. The area reaches its peak in the third quarter of the year, and it is the second highest season of the year after Ramadan.
This year, 2025, the competition among the brands in Sahel for impactful presence on OOH was at its peak, with a total market spending of $54m – a figure expected to increase alongside the urban expansion on the North Coast.
By Ahmed Bahgat, CEO, Outsite Billboards
