A content analysis of banner ads in three well-known telecom companies in Saudi Arabia

الملخص EN

The present study focuses on a content analysis of online banner advertisements of three well-known telecom company websites : STC, Mobily, and Zain.

Although there are hundreds of people in Saudi Arabia (both Saudis and expatriates) who use at least one of these three companies as their mobile/Internet provider there is scarce research that has investigated this specific type of ad in this particular country for these specific consumers.

Therefore, this study is mapping out the terrain for how language works for this form of discourse and identifying its most prominent linguistic features.

To achieve this end, 60 online banner ads were used to examine the linguistic means utilized by three telecom companies on their websites.

The data were analyzed following Lapšanská’s (2006) linguistic classification at various linguistic levels: semantic, syntactic, lexical morphological, and phonological.

The findings suggest that online banner ad language is used creatively at various linguistic levels.

Moreover, they also depict that all three companies use very similar linguistic features in their banner ads and are not very different from international telecom company ads.

Also, the study provides evidence that the products and services that these telecom companies advertise indicate a deep understanding of their consumers.

Finally, the findings will provide Saudi-based telecom companies with empirical data that could help their language marketing tactics.