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 Dubai Press Club has rolled out its third annual report into the state of the Arab world’s media, and... well, it says pretty much what you’d expect it to say, really.
(Incidentally, it may be that the report came out before today, but thanks to DPC’s habit of issuing press releases – and so, stories – announcing things that haven’t happened yet, we rather lost track. See also today’s non-news about DPC’s new membership packages... coming in March. Sigh.)
The Arab Media Outlook 2009-2013 report – a hefty 199 pages of fun – confirms that, yes indeed, ad revenues fell by quite a lot last year, particularly in the more developed Gulf markets. It also suggests that – wow! – 2010 will see a recovery, and the next few years will notch up a healthy compound annual growth rate of 8.4%.
Excellent. So, we’re all back on track, then? Not quite.
In fact, this is slightly below the predictions the report cites for overall GDP growth for the region – slated at 10% CAGR over the same 2009-2013 period – suggesting that, in fact, media will underperform compared to the economies of the region overall.
Considering that the Arab world is awash with oil, swarming with youngsters and still in the throes of major infrastructure development, this is perhaps slightly depressing – especially considering, as we keep being told, and as the AMO report reminds us, at $22 per capita, ad spend in the region is pathetically low compared to the developed world.
(Here at AdNation we’re not number-crunchers, so this isn’t something we’re about to embark on ourselves, but we’d be very interested to see per-capita ad spend figures as a percentage of per-capita GDP, as opposed to the raw dollar figure. Considering the widely differing GDP levels across the region, and compared to, say, the USA, wouldn’t this be a more illuminating figure?)
Honestly, we’re not inclined to put too much faith into these or any other predictions, what with not only the world economy remaining highly volatile, but the media’s ongoing and intractable issues with its current business model looking increasingly shaky, and as yet without a viable alternative.
And let’s not even think about the problems getting hard data in this region, where many industry insiders are openly scornful of most of the numbers being paraded around as research.
Given this, early 2010 may not be the best time to make predictions about the next few years, beyond to say “actually, we’re not sure”.
In fairness, 2009’s AMO (2008-2012) report did get close to saying this, acknowledging that the fallout from the global economic crisis was still making itself felt, and was not something the report could model or predict in its numbers. Nevertheless, despite using “conservative” estimates, the 2009 report still predicted healthy growth across the board.
The two historical AMO reports to date have, frankly, been a bit crap at offering accurate predictions: the 2008 edition (covering 2007-2011) failed to spot the massive boom that year, just as the next one failed to model the crash (pace its statement that there would be an impact).
Anyway, not to worry, because beyond the numbers there’s the sentiment – and everyone says they think things are going to get better this year. Hurrah! So everything’s fine, then.
Yeah, right.
There’s lots, lots, lots more in the Arab Media Outlook, which we’re not intending to wade through just now – the full thing is available as a PDF download here, if you really want it.
In the meantime, we’re tempted to make a prediction a la Bill Murray in Groundhog Day... but perhaps that would be a touch toooo negative.
Let’s just settle for “dunno”.
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