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 The Middle East’s advertising spend grew 9% last year, spurred by pan-Arab media and smaller regional markets, according to figures from the Pan Arab Research Centre.
The growth also came despite the UAE’s dismal 2009 performance, which saw spending fall 27% in the Emirates, as reported
last week. The Gulf’s second-biggest ad market, Saudi Arabia, also saw adspend fall, by 6%, along with similar-sized drops in Oman and Bahrain.
But this was more than offset by what Parc suggests is a 34% increase in spending on pan-Arab media, the vast majority (94%) of which is television. Parc’s figures say pan-Arab spend rose to $4.97 billion in 2009, up from $3.71 billion a year earlier.
However, as Parc’s figures may not take discounting by media owners into account (as figures are based on rate card prices), it may be that this growth is somewhat exaggerated.
Tellingly, the growth in space allocated is the same – 34% – as the growth in spending given for pan-Arab media. This would suggest that all the growth has come from an increase in volume, rather than an increase in prices – whereas, given the financial situation throughout 2009, it seems unlikely that clients would have increased their overall spending.
So, yes – colour us sceptical on the size of that increase.
Elsewhere among the whizzy graphs and dramatic red lines of the Parc figures, we can see an interesting – and wholly expected – shift in the big spenders on the scene.
Gone are the developers and the banks, replaced at the top by telcos, telcos, telcos galore. Across all media and all territories, the top four spenders are, respectively, Zain, STC, Etisalat and Moblily. Head & Shoulders rounds out the top five.
With one exception, the rest of the top 10 is firmly FMCG; only Sedar and its heroically-bad ads
for window coverings breaks the run, otherwise dominated by Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Dabur and Dove.
As we go down the list, we see a few more telcos and then some car brands – but not anywhere in the top 30 regional advertisers is there a property developer or a bank (although this does change when looking at UAE figures – but still nothing in the top 10).
Anyway, that was the year that was. Given the likely under-reporting of discounting among media owners, we suspect the 9% growth figures may not be wholly accurate – but we suspect the industry would be happy with flat.
Here’s to some happier-looking figures in 2010.
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