|
 The region’s advertising and media companies are putting their heads together to form a committee to attempt to sort out some of the dues owed by advertising folk to media houses, which may amount to as much as Dhs450 million, according to figures quoted in Emirates Business 24/7.
Arab Media Group chief exec Mohamed Almulla and The Holding Group supremo Joseph Ghossoub were leading the charge to sort the payment mess out. Speaking to EB 24/7, Ghossoub said it had been tough times for everyone since September.
“As a result, the advertising industry that operates on a very low margin and long credit periods mounted as much as Dhs450 million of credit with media houses in the Gulf. Most of the clients are not denying the payment, but extended delays are adding to this problem that is not healthy for the industry,” he said, quoted in the paper.
(Incidentally, that “low margin” comment provoked the following response from one prominent meeja twitterer
this morning: “’The advertising industry operates on very low margins.’ Joe Ghossoub in EmBiz24x7 today. Spat cereal on my screen.” Nice.)
The Dhs450 million figure – which in another piece was qualified to be in the range of Dhs350 million to Dhs450 million – is for the GCC as a whole, although folks in the know told EB 24/7 that the bulk of the debt is to UAE firms.
AMG’s Almulla sounded an optimistic note, when speaking to EB 24/7: “Despite the current outstanding, we do feel that the market has picked up marginally in the past two months and more positive effects should been seen in the fourth quarter. For the collection of old outstandings, we believe, that advertising agencies and clients have come together on payment terms and conditions for settling this issue, which would help the media houses.”
The new media/agency committee apparently includes “more than seven” (eight?) ad agencies, representing more than 80% of the market, according to Ghossoub.
He also told EB 24/7
the agencies and media houses were basing the new committee on a model used in Saudi Arabia in the recent past, to solve a similar issue, which apparently “worked wonderfully”.
Almulla made additional positive noises about all of this silly mess getting sorted out, and suggested things were looking up, in terms of revenues and so forth.
We hope this is right – although as far as unpaid fees go, we’re still wondering how feasible it will be to extract the many, many millions of real-estate related dues out there, from developers that may no longer exist in any meaningful sense.
But at least everyone’s talking; and maybe soon we’ll come to see mixed gangs of advertising and media people, roaming the streets looking for non-paying clients. Hopefully they won’t have edged weapons.
|
