Both matter in the GCC, but the balance shifts by market and audience — Saudi Arabia over-indexes on TikTok among younger, mobile-first users, while the UAE's more international, higher-income audience skews somewhat more toward Instagram, including Reels, without abandoning TikTok.
Rather than picking one, most brands are better served running the same creative system — angle, hook, format — across both and letting platform-specific performance data decide budget split, since details like caption style and pacing still differ enough to need light platform-specific edits.