|
 Advertising revenue in the UAE is predicted to grow by just 6.7% this year – or nothing at all in real terms, allowing for inflation – according to the second Arab Media Outlook report, from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Dubai Press Club.
From 2010 onwards, the UAE will get its double-figure growth back, but only at around 12%, and not the ever-so-slightly hysterical 41% it saw last year.
Across the region as a whole, ad revenue growth rates for the next five years vary from 5% to 25% depending on the country, with most falling in the 9% to 13% range. Qatar snags the high spot at 25% CAGR between 2007-12 – but that still leaves it on around a quarter of the UAE’s total haul, at $486 million compared to $1.9 billion.
The report, and its official press release, put a cheery spin on the figures, talking lots about “opportunity” despite the current economic meltdown hitting the rest of the world.
We’re rather inclined to file these new projections with all the rest of the guesstimates we’ve been treated to lately and keep them somewhere at the back of the cupboard.
We’re not saying they’re going to be wrong – just that, given the deep uncertainty and unpredictability of the economic situation thus far, we don’t believe that anyone is going to be in a position to make accurate predictions, beyond the broad sweep of “this year’s not going to be very good”.
The report goes into a lot of depth on the trends for media in the region, predictably singling out online, user-generated content, and “snackable” video content, for to be watched online.
We’ve only had a quick glance through the report as a whole – it’s a meaty affair – but the emphasis did seem to be on the bright-shiny-upbeat view of the whole Web 2.0 thing, rather than a detailed analysis of the situation. The report definitely lost marks for referencing the now-discredited
“Long Tail” phenomenon, and for not spelling the name of Radiohead’s latest album correctly (“In RainbowS” people – not like it’s hard to find...).
Winning the Sybil Fawlty Award for The Bleedin’ Obvious was PwC partner Ian Sanders, quoted in The National at yesterday’s press conference as saying: “Growth in advertising revenue will fall significantly in 2009 because of the impact of the downturn. At some point, it will start to pick up. The five-year outlook is positive, although it is unlikely to return to the very high level it reached in early 2008.”
Well, duh.
In fairness, as suggested above, there really isn’t a lot else one can say for certain – but we wouldn’t necessarily feel the need for a press conference to say it at. Eh, we're cynics - so sue us.
The report is available to download from the DPC site here, in PDF format, and is probably worth a read.
|
