1 December 2022 – YouTube unveiled lists ranking the top trending videos, top music videos, Shorts, and creators in the Middle East & North Africa today. This year’s lists are reflective of the diversity of content and local creators and artists’ talent from across the region. For the first time, YouTube also unveiled a “Top Shorts” list, which was topped by Omani football freestyler, Mohamed Alnoufali who shared three tricks on Shorts.
Commenting on this year’s end of year lists, Tarek Amin, Director of Partnerships, YouTube MENA said “Every year, the YouTube End-of-Year Top lists give us a glimpse into emerging trends and the diverse interests of people in the Middle East & North Africa. Whether it’s the growing North African rap scene or creators helping people fall in love with learning and reading, one thing is for certain – no matter what your interest or curiosity is there is probably a community on YouTube for it.”
This year, YouTube released five lists available at youtube.com/trends/2022:
- Top Shorts (NEW): A list ranking the most viewed Shorts in MENA in 2022.
- Top Trending Videos: A list ranking the most viewed Trending videos in MENA in 2022.
- Top Music Videos: A list ranking the most viewed music videos in MENA in 2022.
- Top Creators: Based on subscribers gained in 2022 in MENA. This list includes long form, Shorts, and multiformat Creators.
- Breakout Creators: Based on subscribers gained in 2022 in MENA, and channel tripling in size when compared to 2021 (+200% year-over- year growth). This list includes long form, Shorts, and multiformat creators.
On the top Music Videos front, Ahmed Saad’s catchy tunes dominated Music, followed by fellow Egyptian rapper Wegz and Lebanese artist Myriam Fares. This year, YouTube’s top Music Videos list showed a growing musical interest regionally – North African rap and hip-hop scene. North African rap/hip hop artists represented almost half of the top ten lists with rappers and hip- hop artists like MC Artisan, Didiene Canon, Marwa Loud and Rai artist Amoune Talens making it to the top list.
Gaming creator AboFlah was not only the top creator for the second year in a row, but also featured in the top trending videos of the year. The top trending video was a comedy video called the Magic Ring by Abdo Asalsily, with other videos on the list ranging from sports to gaming and entertainment.
The Top Trending Videos list is based on a range of factors – beyond just views – that indicate how “trending” a video really is. The YouTube Culture & Trends team also considers engagement and looks at signals like shares and likes of a certain video.
Additionally, YouTube’s end-of-year Ads and Trends Leaderboards, which shows the top ten ads on YouTube, included Telecom Egypt (WE)’s Ad for musical phone calls, coming second only to Amazon and its Super Bowl campaign for Alexa.
YouTube announced that YouTube Shorts are being watched by over 1.5B logged-in users every month and averaging over 30 billion daily views. The company also announced that YouTube paid more than 50 Billion (USD) to creators, artists, and media companies in the 3 years before June 2022.
