New breed of GCC influencers on TikTok, research reveals

The rise of TikTok has thrown up a new breed of influencers across the GCC country with none of the well-known current influencers in the top 10. UAE-based influencers are the highest ranking GCC TikTok influencers as of July with Jumana Khan, Sarah Milad, Ziba Gulley in the top three spots, although the top 10 is dominated by Saudi Arabian influencers. The study – conducted by analytics and technology consultancy Anavizio – focused on social media influencers on TikTok since the beginning of 2020.

Many of the current influencers in the region from platforms such as Hudabeauty (@hudabeauty with 2 Million followers on Tiktok), Khalid Al Ameri (@khalidandsalama with 1.6 Million followers on Tiktok), and Karen Wazen (@karenwazen with 1.3 Million followers on TikTok) do not feature among the top influencers on Tiktok. Although these well-known influencers have gained a relatively large following since recently joining TikTok, the new stars obviously have an edge over established personalities as they've been on the platform for quite a while and have had more time to build an audience.

According to Fares Ghneim, director at Anavizio, “These new influencers have generated a high fan following and engagement by embracing the format of the platform, with the majority of their content being focused on music, comedy, dance trends. For this particular infographic, we focused on follower count and not entirely on engagement as monitoring tools for this platform continue to evolve”.

Anavizio is monitoring developments on TikTok on an ongoing basis and will be releasing more detailed research in the near future.