When it comes to social media, players on all sides of the regional advertising industry are pointing fingers. Who is keeping the region’s ads behind the times? If you are an advertising agency, it is the media not offering the platforms or infrastructure to properly display creative genius. If you are the media, you are hesitant to make an investment until there is a large enough audience to warrant the expense.
In early 2010, members of the industry had an air of panic over whether the spending of ad dollars in the Middle East would mirror the online transition that was happening all over the world.
“[In 2009] we saw some major brands double their spending online, but we saw other major brands not spend a penny online,” said Hussein Freijeh, Yahoo’s director of advertising sales at Dubai Internet City.
Talking a good game
Today, the industry players are confident, if not boisterous, about their ability to incorporate digital media into their communication strategies. “In my opinion, any advertising agency that is not capable of delivering to the client a total communication solution based on neutral thinking is an agency that will not survive the future. It [has] to talk to the people and not to talk at the people,” said Raja Trad, chief executive officer for Leo Burnett MENA. Agencies have been hiring new staff, bringing in trainers from international networks and creating entirely new departments dedicated to digital strategy and creativity.
But so far the figures that do exist regarding regional spending on online advertising don’t seem to warrant the rush of attention that the industry would have us believe and the ambitious talk of industry executives seems more wishful thinking than statement of fact.
In ZenithOptimedia’s estimations of the size of the digital advertising spend by pan-Arab clients, the total for 2010 was $52 million out of $5.1 billion in total spending. This represents a 550 percent increase since 2007, when the estimation was $8 million, but nonetheless still only makes up 1 percent of the total spending.
The projection for 2013 anticipates online spending to increase to just $134 million, or 2.3 percent of the total spend. To be fair, the pan-Arab client group constitutes only 40 percent of total spending for the region, but the group is a good indicator of regional trends as it comprises the biggest spenders from within the Middle East and North Africa itself.
Though the spend may not be gaining as fast as chief creative officers would like, the consumers are leaps and bounds ahead; social media usage statistics for the region are growing at a breakneck pace. Using Facebook as the best example of the possible reach of social media in the Arab world, the Dubai School of Government’s “Arab Social Media Report” puts the United Arab Emirates on the list of the top 10 countries by Facebook penetration, with 45.38 percent of the population registered on the site at the end of 2010. This is well above the 6.7 percent country average for the Middle East. Still, the number of Facebook users from the Arab world grew 78 percent in 2010 to reach more than 21 million.
But growing popularity doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger spend. Omar Nasreddine, regional director at Grey Group, says that Lebanon, the region’s creative hub, is one of the places where infrastructure is an impediment to progress.
“On one hand we boast about being progressive and leading the trend in the Middle East but when it comes to digital in general we don’t have a decent [broadband] connection, so how do you recommend digital initiatives to clients when you don’t know how reliable the internet will be?” said Nasreddine.
When it comes to developing digital media advertising in the Middle East, it’s a lot more complicated than merely capitalizing on trends. Agencies will need to work around some serious barriers to be able to creatively compete with their international peers. Until the spend increases, the talk is just that.
