Meta ad costs for Egyptian brands jump sixfold in three years

The cost of acquiring a customer through Meta has risen roughly sixfold for Egyptian homegrown brands over the past three years. The businesses most exposed to that cost are responding differently. Some are still thinking about diversifying. Others have already shifted the balance of their marketing spend. None of them are leaving.

The dependency can be total

“No ads, no sales,” Malouk Eats founder Malak Sekaly tells EnterpriseAM. Sekaly estimates that some 80% of the health food company’s goods are sold online, with Meta driving traffic; the remaining 20% goes through physical stores that stock the brand’s specialty range for consumers with dietary restrictions. The online spending crosses over: “Any advertising we do translates into offline sales in supermarkets,” Sekaly says. Supermarkets that stock the brand sometimes ask Malouk Eats to advertise more online to drive foot traffic to their shelves.

Up-Fuse and In Your Shoe are further along: At the upcycled fashion label Up-Fuse, Meta is “no longer the only or even dominant channel,” commercial director Yara Yassin tells us. At In Your Shoe, reducing Meta dependence and diversifying performance marketing across other platforms is one of the brand’s main objectives, co-founder and Managing Partner Amr Kawashti tells us.

The cost curve has broken

Every source we spoke to flagged the same problem: cost. Sekaly’s number is the sharpest. Three years ago, EGP 5k a month on Meta “would create crazy sales, but now I have to spend a minimum of EGP 30k just to hit my targets.” Up-Fuse has seen customer acquisition costs rise faster than average order values, forcing the brand to lean harder on retention and repeat purchases, Yassin says.

The sharper threat

A Meta-dependent revenue stream sits at the mercy of an automated enforcement system. Meta’s AI-led anti-spam, security-breaches, and guideline-violations enforcement is notorious globally for erroneously shutting out small businesses. The real issue, Sekaly says, is what happens next. “You can’t really pick up the phone and call someone for support. It doesn’t work like that. It’s just non-existent; you can’t do it.”

Malouk Eats has had its account disabled multiple times, killing sales for weeks. Kawashti puts it differently: when marketing depends on one platform, “any friction there becomes a major business problem.”

The diversification playbook

“The lesson for brands today is that you cannot rely on one platform only,” Kawashti says. Growth, he argues, comes from continuously testing channels and approaches: organic content, creator-led marketing, CRM, word of mouth, and offline retail. Up-Fuse’s mix now runs across organic content, email and SMS, word of mouth, and emerging platforms, including TikTok, though Meta still plays a significant role in customer acquisition, Yassin says.

None of the people we spoke to would specify which non-Meta channel is doing the heaviest lifting for them, or whether any of them are replacing Meta at comparable customer acquisition cost. That is the question the diversification story turns on, and the one it still hasn’t answered.

Why they stay

The reason is that Meta still works: “Meta still gives value, but not in the easy way it may have in the past,” Kawashti says. What it takes now, he argues, is “stronger creative, sharper execution, and better measurement to make it work well,” plus an approach that treats Meta as one tool within a broader mix that includes creators, content, community, CRM, retail, and other acquisition levers.