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Tickmill held its first physical event in Morocco at the end of last month. As we’ve never really looked at North Africa on TradeInformer, this made me think it might be time to have a look at the region.

The main countries here are Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt. I have seen some companies targeting Libya but, given the political situation there and how difficult it is to get money out of the country, I don’t think this is really on most brokers’ radars.

The combined population of those four countries is about 210m, with Egypt accounting for about half of that. GDP per capita is in the (roughly) $4,000 to $5,000 range. However, it’s worth noting that urban areas tend to be much wealthier, as you’d expect.

For example, in Casablanca, where Tickmill held its event, per capita income is almost $10,000. Note that all of these figures are in nominal terms.

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The other striking feature of all these countries is Android dominance. In all four, about 90% of people use Android, not iPhone. In contrast, the UK is split about 50/50 between iOS and Android devices.

My only ‘first hand’ experience of this region was being in Morocco last year and being spammed by XM ads constantly on my phone when I was there.

Interestingly, this actually seems to be the main country in the region that XM targets. They do it via a website called xmarabia.net and Morocco – if SimilarWeb is accurate – drives more than half of the website’s traffic.

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The other company that has targeted this region more openly is Exness. One of their first ‘Team Pro’ members was Momen Medhat, who is Egyptian and regularly puts out content that implies he is targeting the country. Egypt is currently one of Exness’s main sources of traffic.

At the end of September this year, Exness added Salim Djerarr, who is Algerian, to its Team Pro ‘roster’. It’s worth noting that Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco are more Francophone and also have Arabic dialects that are very different from, for instance, Levantine Arabic speakers. So it makes sense from that point of view to have someone focused on those countries, as opposed to just having an Egyptian Arabic speaker working with them.

Aside from its regular IB agreements, Exness is also hammering Egypt with Google ads. In the last month, Exness had about 400 different Google ads targeting the country. The large majority of those appear to be on video with the primary goal of getting app downloads.

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There are a couple of notable tidbits here. One is that a lot of the ads are targeting gold trading. The other is that Exness filmed this big ad campaign in April and they are using this to target clients. But they filmed the exact same ad with different actors for different regions. In this case, you can see them making use of the actor for the region.

Is this working? Presumably yes, given that the company’s app is currently ranking high in the Egyptian Play Store for free finance downloads. It’s striking too that the company is pushing their own app, rather than MetaTrader. 

It’s worth noting here that among the North African countries, Exness’s focus is clearly on Egypt. In the last month, Exness has only displayed about 25 different Google ads to people in Morocco and 50 in Algeria. None have been displayed in Tunisia.

As the above suggests, XM is also big in North Africa. Again, the main market they target seems to be Morocco. They’ve used 400 different Google ads to target clients in Morocco in the last 30 days but ‘only’ 300 in Egypt. Unlike Exness, most of these are search-based, which may mean it’s more targeted – as opposed to spamming YouTube, like Exness seems to be doing. 

However, what is interesting here is that – like Exness – the target seems to be to get people to download the XM app, not MetaTrader. The company is currently (I’m writing this on Sunday) 26th in free finance app downloads in Egypt and 13th in Morocco. The Egypt downloads mean XM is (currently) ahead of Exness in Egypt for downloads. However, Exness gets far more web traffic from Egypt than XM does. This could be down to the YouTube spam vs more targeted approach described above.

The other brokers who are doing well in these countries are Olymptrade and ExpertOption. To some extent Capital.com and IQ Option are also doing well, particularly in Tunisia for the former and Algeria for the latter.

I find Olypmtrade and ExpertOption potentially the most interesting companies in this industry and no one ever seems to understand why. The basic reason is that they – and I apologise for the double negative – cannot NOT be spending millions per month on ads. It is simply not possible for them to rank as well as they do in app downloads if they aren’t. 

Then when you look at some of the ads, they are as good or even better than what the biggest players in the industry are doing. And yet they are almost totally anonymous in structure. I did try to visit Olymptrade at their office in Vanuatu. Sadly, no one was there.

Olymptrade is also a good example of what I’m describing. They recently redesigned their website and app and are currently 16th in free finance apps in Egypt – above Exness and XM. They have had more than 400 different Google ads targeting Egypt over the last month. 

Across Meta’s products, they have launched more than 200 ads just for Egypt since the start of this month. One of these involves a Sesame Street-style puppet teaching a bunch of cats how to trade. One of the cats then drives around with a scantily clad women in a convertible. Also the puppet sunbathes on a yacht with a woman in a bikini. 

ExpertOption / PocketOption seem to follow a similar but lower quality strategy of bombing Google and Meta ads to get clients. Given that they have done this for years, I am assuming they are either deep-pocketed masochists or it works. 

Again, I find it kind of amazing that these random, anonymous companies are seemingly more creative and better at doing ad spend / brand building than so many other companies in the industry. You hear all the time that ‘no one can move beyond MetaQuotes’ and yet these guys are making a killing doing it and have done for years. But hey, what do I know?

I don’t really see anyone else getting much traction or focusing on these markets. IronFX is doing a bit in Morocco. Amana seems to be picking up some clients in Egypt too. Otherwise there is nothing major that I can see anyone doing but you are free to send hate mail if I’m wrong.

The general lesson I can see is that the companies doing well are all making localised content and ads. In Exness’s case they’ve even got the Team Pro guys to help them ‘connect’ more with locals. There is also a lot of branding building going on. In other words – they are not just finding random IBs and doing revenue share. There is much more brand building and going after clients directly, with ‘creatives’ that are very localised.