The Award That Moved to Riyadh

On the evening of 21 November 2024, the MENA Effie Awards held their ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh. It was the programme's fifteenth edition and the first time it had been staged in Saudi Arabia. The event was folded into Riyadh Season, and more than 650 marketing and advertising professionals attended.

Eighteen months later, on 11 June 2026, a second Effie ceremony took place in the city. This one carried a different name: Effie Awards Saudi Arabia, a national programme that made the Kingdom the 55th market to join the Effie network. Its theme was "Pride of the Kingdom."

Awards ceremonies change venues all the time. Hotels compete for galas, and sponsors follow audiences. On its own, a relocation would not deserve much attention.

But the Effies are an unusual kind of award, and that makes their growth in the Kingdom worth examining.

An award that asks for receipts

Most advertising awards reward ideas. Juries judge whether a campaign is original, well crafted, or culturally resonant. The Effies were built on a different premise. They began in 1968 in New York, created by the local chapter of the American Marketing Association to honour advertising that worked. In 2008, the brand moved to a separate nonprofit, Effie Worldwide, which today runs around 60 programmes covering more than 125 markets.

The scoring system explains the difference. Effie judges divide each case into four parts. The business challenge and objectives, the strategic idea, and the execution each carry 23.3 percent of the score. Results carry 30 percent, the largest single share. Effie's own entry guidance warns entrants against writing objectives after the fact to match the results they happened to achieve.

That design has a consequence. An effectiveness award can only grow where marketers are willing to put numbers in front of a jury of their peers. A creative trophy needs a good idea. An Effie needs a good idea, a stated goal, and evidence that the goal was met.

So the question is not simply why the Effies came to Riyadh. It is what their arrival says about how marketing in the Kingdom is now being judged.

Three sets of incentives

The first explanation is the most obvious one: money. Saudi Arabia is the largest advertising market in the region. A 2025 estimate published by Communicate put the Kingdom's annual ad spend at roughly $4.2 billion, with about 83 percent of it digital. A separate report by the Saudi media company GMedia and Oxford Business Group projected a lower figure of SAR 9.4 billion ($2.5 billion) for 2025, up 10.5 percent on the previous year. The estimates diverge sharply, which says something about how young the measurement of this market still is. But they agree on direction, and on Saudi Arabia's lead.

The second explanation lies with the organiser, and with Effie itself. NordStella, a subsidiary of Akama Holding, has run the regional programme since 2009. In 2024, the same year the gala moved to Riyadh, Effie Worldwide agreed to sell its commercial assets to Ascential, the owner of Cannes Lions, while its nonprofit arm became a foundation. Awards are businesses. They depend on entry fees, sponsors, and attendance, and the people who run them have every reason to go where the budgets are. That is not a criticism. It is how the industry works, and it applies to every awards body that has opened an office in the Gulf.

The third set of incentives belongs to the hosts. The 2024 and 2025 regional galas were held under Riyadh Season, and the Saudi Media Company formed a strategic partnership with NordStella under the patronage of Turki Alalshikh. At the 2024 ceremony, a General Entertainment Authority executive described the event as part of the Season's role in drawing international industries and positioning the Kingdom as a destination for innovation. For the host, a regional awards gala is a convening tool. It brings an industry's decision makers into the city and keeps them there for an evening.

These incentives align. The organiser gains a larger market. The host gains a regional industry gathering. The local industry gains a stage at home. When three parties want the same outcome, the outcome tends to happen quickly.

What the numbers show, and what they do not

Published figures from the two Riyadh editions of the regional awards tell a more complicated story than the word "growth" suggests.

In 2024, organisers reported more than 850 entries, more than 90 winners, and more than 40 categories, with about 650 people in attendance. In 2025, they reported more than 800 entries, more than 100 winners, more than 60 categories, and an audience of more than 800.

The event grew. The number of categories grew by half. Attendance rose. The number of entries, on the published rounded figures, did not rise and may have slipped slightly.

There are several reasonable explanations, and the available evidence does not settle between them. Rounded figures like "800+" can hide real movement in either direction. Some Saudi agencies may have begun holding work back for the new national programme, which opened in September 2025 and held its ceremony the following June. And an expanding category list naturally produces more trophies from a similar pool of cases.

What can be said is that the ceremony scaled faster than the competition beneath it, at least in the data made public. For an award whose entire premise is that claims should be backed by evidence, that distinction matters.

One detail points in a more substantive direction. In both years, organisers highlighted growth in entries submitted directly by brands rather than through agencies. That is a small signal, but a meaningful one. Effectiveness is the language of the client. When a brand enters on its own behalf, it is presenting its marketing as a business result rather than an agency showcase.

Who won at home

The first Saudi edition offers a clearer picture of the local field. Winners were selected by a jury of more than 100 professionals across 26 categories. Habbar, a Saudi creative agency, was named the most effective advertising agency office, with eight awards across five campaigns. Its work for the automotive brand Sayyar, "Time To Speak Up For Manhood," took the night's only Grand Prix. Mobily was named the most effective brand. Other winning brands included Balady+, the Tourism Development Fund, Barq, Sakan Foundation, and MDLBEAST.

Two observations follow from that list.

The first concerns geography. At the regional awards in Riyadh, the top advertising agency office titles went to Dubai offices in both years: Leo Burnett Dubai in 2024 and FP7 McCann Dubai in 2025. At the Saudi edition, the creative crown went to a Saudi agency. Yet the media agency of the year was OMD UAE. One ceremony is not a trend. Still, it hints at a split worth watching: creative work increasingly made in the Kingdom, while parts of media planning and buying continue to be run from across the border.

The second concerns the mix of winners. The list combines private brands, such as Sayyar and Barq, with public and quasi-public entities, such as the Tourism Development Fund and Sakan Foundation. The objectives of these two groups are rarely the same. A retailer measures sales and market share. A fund or foundation may measure awareness, participation, or applications. Effie's framework accommodates both, because it judges results against the objectives each entrant sets. But it means that "most effective" in the Saudi market will often mean effective at a public mission, not only at a commercial one. That is a feature of the local economy, not a flaw in the award, and readers comparing Saudi winners with those of other markets should keep it in mind.

The mechanism beneath the trophy

Why would a market want an award built on evidence? The answer has less to do with prizes than with reputation.

In most advertising markets, agencies are chosen through a combination of relationships, credentials, and showreels. Showreels demonstrate taste. They do not demonstrate outcomes. An Effie case offers a different currency: a documented account, reviewed by a confidential jury, that links a piece of work to a stated business goal.

The national programme also changes the arithmetic of recognition. Finalists and winners of Effie Saudi Arabia earn points in the Global Effie Index, Effie's worldwide ranking of agencies and brands. Before the Saudi edition existed, Saudi work competed for those points only within the full MENA pool. A national programme gives local agencies a direct route into a global ranking.

There are two fair ways to read this. A national jury understands local context, consumer behaviour, and market conditions better than a regional panel can. A national field is also smaller than a regional one, which means more trophies per market. Both are true at once, and the credibility of the Saudi programme will depend on which reading its future winners support.

The award's own safeguards are worth noting here. Effie judges see the results that entrants supply. The rules ask entrants to source their data and to avoid retrofitting objectives, and the fact that the guidance repeats these points suggests the temptation is familiar everywhere. An effectiveness award raises the standard of proof. It does not replace the need to verify it.

What the growth actually measures

It would be easy to read the Effies' arrival as a story about an industry following money. That reading is partly correct. The budgets are here, the organiser has commercial reasons to grow, and the host has reasons of its own to welcome the event.

But the more useful interpretation concerns what the Effies require. An awards programme built on results can only take root where a meaningful number of brands are prepared to define success in advance and show whether they reached it. The relocation of the gala proves that Riyadh can host the industry. It does not yet prove that the industry has adopted the discipline the award is meant to reward.

That evidence will arrive over the next few editions, and it will be found in plain numbers. Whether entries rise, not just categories and guests. Whether more brands enter directly. Whether Saudi agencies that win at home go on to win where the field is wider. Those are the results an effectiveness award should be judged on, and by its own standard, the Effies' growth in Arabia has set its objectives. The results section is still being written.