How to plan your Ramadan ad budget without rising CPMs eating your profit

Why Ramadan squeezes your margin

Ramadan is not a single sales day. Yango Ads describes it as a gradual demand curve that starts weeks before the month, and warns that brands which delay their campaigns face intense competition (1). In an ad auction, more advertisers chasing the same audience means you pay more for each impression. That is the CPM pressure that eats margin.

The demand itself is real. Order volumes rose by up to 60% in Saudi Arabia and the UAE during the first week of Ramadan 2025, according to Tamara's data (3). And 72% of TikTok users spend more than they budgeted during Ramadan (4). So the question is not whether to advertise. It is how to reach that demand without paying peak prices for all of it.

A season timeline: when to start and what to do in each phase

Yango Ads' playbook splits Ramadan demand into four phases (5). You can build your budget around the same phases:

• Weeks before the month (awareness): people start planning their Ramadan purchases up to 3 weeks before the month begins (6). Launch awareness campaigns here, before competition intensifies (1), and focus on building an audience that engages with your content.
• Before launch: set up your data. TikTok advises running Pixel and Events API together, and syncing the product catalog in Catalog Manager so dynamic ads can run all month (7).
• Consideration: households plan their purchases and compare options (5). Point retargeting at people who watched your content or visited your store.
• Conversion peak: conversions peak in the evenings and at weekends (5), and engagement rises sharply after iftar (8). This is where your strongest sales messages belong.
• Through the month (loyalty): repeat purchasing builds across Ramadan (5), so keep talking to people who have already bought from you.

Build retargeting audiences before costs climb

If you wait until the month starts to build your audience, you build it during the most crowded period (1). If you start in the awareness phase, you enter the peak with warm audiences you only need to remind, instead of starting from zero.

For those audiences to work, your data has to be in order before launch: Pixel with Events API, and a synced catalog for dynamic ads (7). Then segment your audience by how close it is to buying:

• People who watched or engaged with your videos.
• People who viewed product pages.
• People who added to cart but did not complete the order.
• Past buyers, your loyalty-phase audience.

An abandoned cart in Ramadan is lost demand in the most expensive weeks of the year. If that is your problem, read how to recover abandoned carts on WhatsApp without annoying the customer. If your store gets plenty of traffic but few orders, fix that before the season with why your store gets lots of visitors but few sales.

How to shift your messaging across the month

Do not make every ad a discount. In TikTok's Ipsos-run research, 56% of Ramadan shoppers prefer entertaining, story-led content, against 49% who prefer offers, discounts and exclusive previews (9). And 60% of TikTok users bought a product after seeing Ramadan content (10).

Sequence your messages like this:

• Before the month: story-led content that introduces your product in a Ramadan context and builds your retargeting pool.
• During fasting hours: daytime activity slows, and Yango Ads advises avoiding food-related messaging during these hours (8).
• After iftar and at weekends: engagement rises and conversions peak (5) (8), so this is where offers and direct sales messages go.
• Across the month: Tamara recommends a balanced plan combining engaging content with sales-driven messaging (2), rather than switching entirely to selling on peak days.

How many creatives you need, and how to handle fatigue

Creative fatigue in a crowded season means paying more for an audience that has stopped paying attention. TikTok recommends starting with 4 to 6 videos, then adding 2 to 5 more when budget increases or creative fatigue sets in (11). So have your second batch ready before the month starts, not halfway through it.

Creative sources worth testing:

• Creator content: YouTube Creator Partnerships let advertisers run creators' organic videos as ads, and Google recommends working with creators on Ramadan content (12).
• Interactive formats: Snapchat's AR Ramadan Mall reached more than 16.8 million MENA users in 2025, and average engagement time rose 30.25% compared with 2024 (13).

If you are unsure which platform deserves the larger share of your budget in Saudi Arabia, read Snapchat, TikTok or Meta ads in Saudi Arabia: where to put your budget.

How to protect margin when competition peaks

• Do not put the whole budget into the peak: Tamara advises a balanced plan across the whole of Ramadan rather than concentrating campaigns on peak periods (2). Early spend builds the audience, and peak spend harvests it.
• Spend by time of day: daytime activity slows and engagement rises after iftar (8), so do not spread spend evenly across every hour.
• Do not rely on discounting alone: since story-led content appeals to more shoppers than offers do (9), a deep discount is not your only lever, and every point of discount comes straight out of margin.
• Raise order value: bundles, sets and instalment options help cover the cost of the ad. For more on this, read do Tabby and Tamara really lift conversion rate and AOV?
• Measure on profit: ROAS can look fine while discounts, shipping and returns erode profit. See MER vs ROAS vs POAS vs ROI to choose the number you run the season on.
• In Egypt specifically: every refused cash-on-delivery order is ad and shipping cost with no revenue, so read how to reduce refused COD orders in Egypt.

Sources

1. (1) Communicate Online (reporting Yango Ads' Ramadan 2026 Demand Playbook) · 2026-02-11
2. (2) Tamara · 2026-02-19
3. (3) Tamara · 2026-02-19
4. (4) TikTok for Business · 2026-03
5. (5) Communicate Online (reporting Yango Ads' Ramadan 2026 Demand Playbook) · 2026-02-11
6. (6) TikTok for Business · 2026-03
7. (7) TikTok for Business · 2026-03
8. (8) Communicate Online (reporting Yango Ads' Ramadan 2026 Demand Playbook) · 2026-02-11
9. (9) TikTok for Business · 2026-03
10. (10) TikTok for Business · 2026-03
11. (11) TikTok for Business · 2026-03
12. (12) Google (Think with Google, MENA) · 2026-03-25
13. (13) Communicate Online (reporting Snap Inc. figures) · 2026-01-23

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