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 The UAE’s ad spend slipped into time-warp last year, with 2009’s numbers looking suspiciously like 2007, according to new data from the Pan Arab Research Centre.
Parc’s final 2009 tally puts UAE spending at $1.46 billion, very close to 2007’s $1.42 billion (actually rather lower, if you were to take inflation into account), and a long way – 27% in fact – from 2008’s $2-billion-odd of joyous, wonderful advertising spend. Oh, happy days.
But a closer look reveals this to have been a dystopian, alternate-reality 2007, with plunging instead of booming real-estate spending (ditto for financial and banking) and jumpy figures all round.
Funnily enough, the change in these two sectors does a lot to explain that 27% fall, according to Sami Raffoul, general manager of Parc.
“If we look at the total ad spend in 2009 and that of 2008, we will notice that the difference is almost equivalent to the sum of the decline in ad spend for both real estate and financial services categories,” he explained, quoted in Emirates Business 24/7.
Indeed, the paper’s quick addition of the real-estate fall from $644 million to $135 million (that’s 79%, fact-fans. Gosh...) and financial’s $108 million to $63 million gives a figure of $555 million – the vast majority of the gap in spending from a year ago.
So, we’ve lost a year, and two sectors. This is pretty much in line with rule-of-thumb predictions being made by people in the know throughout the year – so they can feel happily smug.
Much more critical, though, is what’s going to happen next. Being filled with clever people, Parc has an answer to this, too: growth of between 6% and 10% for the UAE ad market in 2010, suggested by stronger growth in Q4 of 2009.
“The growth will mainly be influenced by increased ad spend from the banking sector. It is certain that financial institutions will not be able to remain silent for long, notably because of the need to retain their clients and maintain their share of voice in the market,” said Raffoul in EB 24/7.
Being a) cautious, and b) not all that clever, we’d be a little more reticent on making predictions for 2010 as a whole, especially based on a single quarter of better figures. But, if we were pressed, we’d agree (on the basis of not much at all) that Parc’s suggestion sounds pretty plausible.
Roll on 2010, we say. At least it’s unlikely to be worse... [ducks]
(Apologies for the general quietness around AdNation this last week: your correspondent has been suffering from a pesky illness, which probably travelled back with him from the UK, and seems to be enjoying the weather here. Bah.)
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