Recent reports said that prices for outdoor advertising sites in Dubai have shot up by between 30 and 50 per cent this year. This compares with increases from 15 to 25 per cent during the whole of 2007.
While TV and print boast of large audiences, many of the numbers are not audited, and it’s virtually impossible to verify whether people watching the channel or reading the paper actually see/notice the ad.
With uncertain audiences and rising costs, where is a start-up company going to advertise?
“The best place to advertise would be on social networking sites,” says Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi.
“Who do you trust first? Do you trust a flat picture, or your best friend? These sites allow that best friend contact very inexpensively now-you can put some thing on Youtube, and people will watch it. So it’s very exciting in advertising now. We have all these new ways to touch people. There’s no need for big splash anymore.”
Social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook are growing in popularity. Facebook has more than 500 groups tagged with Dubai, ranging from ‘Dubai Rental Challenge’, ‘The Dubai Car Club’, to ‘Vote for Dubai to be a city on Monopoly World Edition!’
While Orkut maybe banned in the city, there are still around 1000 communities using its name- school groups, business groups, and other random ones like Dubai nights, Dubai Dating etc.
Interestingly, a study by German internet traffic management company Ipoque in 2007 found that people in the Middle East don’t use Youtube. Only 0.07 percent of the local IP traffic was caused by streaming media applications, compared to around eight percent in Germany.
But the number of regional ads on the site, tell a different story. Emaar, Etisalat, Dubai Shopping Festival, all have around 100 entries- personal videos, ads, sponsored events - the whole mix. While ‘Burj Dubai Official Video’ was viewed by more than 125, 500 people, The Palm got more than 87,000 views.
Smaller companies are also using the site- like New Oasis Advertising, a video production house, whose show reel has got more than 450 views. The ad for Alfalak Electronics in Dubai has also been viewed more than 400 times.
It’s necessary for advertisers to move beyond traditional advertising and make it interactive, says Dimitri Metaxas, group director of OMD Digital. “Its not only about issuing brand statements and blasting out messages to people who passively consume them, but the race is on to get them to participate and involve.”
Worldwide spending on internet advertising will total $65.2bn in 2008, nearly 10 percent of ad spending across all media, says IDC, a global market analyst. It’s Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast predicts that this share will reach 13.6 percent by 2011, as internet ad spending grows to $106.6bn worldwide. The study also says that Middle East and Africa will experience one of the fastest increases during the period, with a growth rate of around 30 percent.
“Everything is now going to happen on the screen; we live now in the screen age. You have a screen in your pocket- your mobile, a screen in your office- your computer, a screen at home- your TV. So that screen is the most intimate personal thing,” says Roberts, adding that it is essential for advertisers to target this market.
A recent report by Juniper research says that the mobile phone user base in the Middle East and Africa is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 10.5 per cent between 2008 and 2013.
