Pakistani marketing agencies earned $30.7 million from foreign clients between July and September 2026, a 19% jump on the $25.8 million of a year earlier. The numbers are State Bank of Pakistan data, quoted by payments company Payoneer at an event for agencies in Lahore.
Payoneer called the event Payoneer Connect Lahore and gave it the theme “The Export Era of Global Marketing”. More than 40 agencies attended to talk about landing overseas clients and growing with them. Speakers came from the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) and Google, alongside AI practitioners.
Advertising is a small slice of a bigger shift. Payoneer pointed to the State Bank’s wider “other business services” bucket, where PR, consulting and technical work also sit: it brought in $620 million for the quarter, 27% more than a year before. Consulting and PR alone grew 22% to $81.2 million. In other words, most of that bucket’s money comes from services other than advertising.
The AI session asked a blunt question: has Pakistan reached the ceiling of freelancing and outsourcing? Kitsune AI founder and CEO Ali Imran Memon discussed turning agency know-how into AI agents and products, rather than selling hours, and whether such services should be priced per subscription, per task or per result.
Google’s Customer Solutions team demonstrated AI-based localisation as a way to reach buyers in other markets. P@SHA Vice Chairman Samad Saleem spoke about advocacy and policy work meant to scale digital exports, against the government’s goal of $15 billion in IT exports by 2030.
The export figures come from Payoneer’s release and were not independently checked here.
This story is based on a press release from Payoneer.
