PERFORMANCE MARKETING · USER ACQUISITION
Saudi Arabia. The most valuable ride-hailing market in MENA. Jeeny needed first rides. Happy Ads delivered them — at scale, on the Cost Per First Ride model that only the best performance teams can run.
The Challenge
Jeeny — the Saudi-first ride-hailing app competing with Uber and Careem in the Kingdom — needed to acquire new users who would not just download the app, but complete a first ride. In Saudi Arabia's ride-hailing market, install-to-ride conversion is the defining performance challenge: Uber's brand dominance and Careem's regional recognition mean that new users who download a challenger ride-hailing app often have that app displaced on the home screen by a more familiar brand before they take their first trip.
Saudi Arabia's mobile advertising market is competitive and expensive: CPMs are among the highest in MENA, creative standards are high, and audience saturation for ride-hailing adjacent audiences (urban professionals, frequent travellers, young adults) is significant. Running a Cost Per First Ride (CPFR) campaign in this environment requires a performance partner with the audience data to find unconverted ride-hailing users, the creative capability to produce messaging that drives first-ride commitment, and the optimisation infrastructure to maintain CPFR targets as scale increases.
The campaign needed to identify and reach Saudi users who were genuinely ready to try a new ride-hailing app — users who had not yet formed a strong brand preference, or who had a specific reason to try Jeeny over the established alternatives.
The Solution
Happy Ads deployed a Cost Per First Ride model for Jeeny in KSA — structuring the campaign so media spend was tied directly to completed first rides, not installs or sign-ups. This model required deep event tracking integration with Jeeny's backend: Happy Ads' campaigns were connected to Jeeny's MMP to receive real-time signals when first rides were completed, allowing bid optimisation and audience targeting to be continuously refined based on which users were actually converting to riders.
Channel mix concentrated on high-intent mobile inventory: navigation and mapping apps (users already in travel-planning mode), news and sports apps targeting Saudi's urban professional audience, and programmatic video running across Jeeny's core cities (Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam). Creative was built around Jeeny's Saudi-first positioning — a local champion in a market where Uber is American and Careem is UAE-headquartered. First-ride offers (discounted or free first trips) provided the conversion trigger that drove new users from intent to action.
The CPFR model's power is in its alignment: Happy Ads only succeeded financially when Jeeny users completed real first rides. This shared commercial interest produced an optimisation dynamic impossible to achieve in impression or install-based models — every campaign decision was made with the goal of producing actual rides, not just media metrics.
Key Results
CPFR
Model — Paid on First Rides, Not Installs
KSA
Most Valuable MENA Ride-Hailing Market
Scale
New First-Time Riders — Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam
Aligned
Happy Ads Wins Only When Jeeny Wins
Key Insights
01
02
In Saudi Arabia, where Vision 2030 and economic nationalism are reshaping consumer preferences, a locally-headquartered ride-hailing app has a brand positioning advantage that Uber and Careem cannot replicate. Happy Ads' Jeeny creatives consistently outperformed generic 'fast rides' messaging when they emphasised Jeeny's Saudi roots and local investment thesis. Creative that speaks to Saudi identity and local ownership drives first-ride trial among users who have a philosophical preference for supporting local platforms.
03
Saudi Arabia has among the highest mobile advertising CPMs in MENA — which makes it an expensive market for install-volume campaigns. But Saudi ride-hailing users have high trip frequency and relatively high basket size per ride. The LTV of a converted Saudi rider is significantly higher than a user in a lower-CPI emerging market. CPFR campaigns in Saudi Arabia are expensive per first ride — but the lifetime value of each acquired rider makes the economics highly favourable for platforms willing to invest in quality acquisition.
