2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

Khalifa Fund has been working with Emirati founded startups for 3 years. The objective was to inspire more UAE Nationals to pursue entrepreneurship and support them to grow and succeed. The target audience were Emiratis with an interest in solving larger challenges faced by the world today. The desired outcome was to increase interest in entrepreneurialism. startAD has worked with over 6000 aspiring entrepreneurs and 300 startup founders in the last two years. While there are many entrepreneurial activities in the ecosystem currently, focused and substantive programs that help businesses off the ground and to any real scale are still limited.

Describe the strategy

Facebook and Instagram selected as platforms to run paid campaigns. Facebook & Instagram's targeting capabilities are very effective in reaching relevant and designated audience groups. In order to maximise awareness and traffic to site, we chose the following targeting segments: • Location: United Arab Emirates • Age: 20 - 45 • Language: Arabic • Interests: Small business, Small and medium enterprises, Startup company, entrepreneurship or lean startup And also chose: • Interests: Arab news, Al Arabiya, BBC Arabic Television, Dubai International Airport, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, BBC Arabic or CNN Arabic • Behaviours: People who prefer high value goods in UAE Along with: • Interests: Tech, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Aviation, Machine Learning or Construction

Describe the execution

The campaign ran for three weeks between 1st October - 22nd October 2019 where we received over 200 registrations with 70% of quality local startups. We used our previous edition's highlights video with call to action to sign up.

List the results

Impressions: 567k Reach: 224.6k Average engagement: 3.87% Quality startups: 63% Total registrations: 200