The Advertisers Business Group (ABG), in partnership with Maktoob, held a networking event at the rooftop terrace of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Dubai Media City.

Among the attendees were marketeers, brand builders and advertisers from renowned local and multinational organizations. The event was one of several networking events organized by the ABG throughout the year to raise awareness of the work of the association and enable members to learn more on key marketing and media issues. The strong turnout was a clear reflection of the region's growth and critical importance of digital media and marketing.

The guests were welcomed by Sara Sahely, Vice Chair of the ABG, who introduced the members of ABG's  recently established Online Media Measurement Task Force, led by Inger Hedin. The committee comprises representation from major multinational advertisers and has been established to evaluate the internet research in the GCC (and MENA) region.

Sara Sahely introduced the evening's guest speaker, Ahmed Nassef, Vice President of the Maktoob Group and General Manager of Maktoob.com, the Arab world's leading web portal and online community, who gave an insightful presentation on 'Digital Marketing in the Arab World'. He highlighted the fact that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has the  fastest rate of internet user growth in the world and touched on the challenges of marketing to a  Pan Arab audience. Some markets in the Gulf, such as the UAE, already have high internet penetration.

Ahmed went on to discuss  online media trends, such as discussion forums. He stressed that internet usage in the region had reached a "tipping point" and that it was time for advertisers to follow the audience and invest more in online advertising. Only 1% of ad spending in the GCC/Levant is currently invested in the internet, although it is growing faster than other media. Digital technologies lend themselves to precise auditing and measurement like no other media platform and the region also has to catch up with other parts of the world in terms of online audience measurement. This will help to grow confidence. 

Ahmed finished by discussing the merger between Yahoo! And Maktoob and what it would mean for users  and advertisers in the region. Benefits would include Yahoo! media products in Arabic, customized for the Arab world, massive combined reach, targeting technologies to improve ROI and investment in industry best practices, transparency and measurement.

"Increased internet penetration will drive online ad spend" stressed Inger Hedin following the presentation."This medium is measurable, which means that the advertisers know exactly what they are getting for their investment. The presentation by Ahmed Nasser, and the following discussion, showed an increased interest in the internet as a medium in this region", she added.

Yahoo!  Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Maktoob.com, the leading online community in the Arab world, with more than 16.5 million unique users.

The combination of local expertise and global scale will provide best online experience for consumers in the Arab world and platform for advertisers in the region

"This acquisition will accelerate Yahoo!’s strategy of expanding in high-growth emerging markets where we believe Yahoo! has unparalleled opportunity to become the destination of choice for consumers,” said Yahoo! chief executive officer Carol Bartz. "Access to information and communications tools can positively impact people’s lives in many ways, and with the acquisition of Maktoob.com and our investment in the region, the Arab world will soon get a Yahoo! experience in Arabic with relevant local language content, programming and services.”

Internet users in the region will benefit from the combination of Yahoo!’s popular products and services  with Maktoob's compelling local content, which today reaches one in three people online throughout the Arab world. This acquisition will extend Yahoo!'s current offerings by adding capabilities to deliver relevant Arabic-language content and services, as well as Arabic versions of Yahoo!’s popular Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail services.  Maktoob.com is accessed by users in countries that include UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

“Yahoo! and Maktoob are natural partners and this combination should help energize the Internet market in the region as a whole.  We are excited about Yahoo! building a stronger presence in the Middle East and bringing its compelling suite of services to Arab users in Arabic," said Samih Toukan, Founder of Maktoob. 

While Internet usage in the Middle East has grown more than tenfold since 2000, most markets are still in the early stages of adoption. According to the World Bank, there are more than 320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, while less than one per cent of all online content is in Arabic. 

With Yahoo! and Maktoob.com’s combined audience and platform, advertisers will have access to the reach and sophisticated targeting capabilities they need to effectively engage with the region’s online consumers.  Spending on online advertising is expected to grow by 35 - 40 percent this year in the region, according to Madar Research.

"Internet users in the Arab world will have access to Yahoo!'s vast content portfolio,  as well as world-class communications products, which will be available in Arabic for the first time.  In addition, advertisers will be able to leverage the vast reach of the newly combined audiences to effectively market to consumers across the region," said Ahmed Nassef, general manager of Maktoob.com.

Maktoob.com was founded in 2000 by Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury as the world’s first free Arabic/English Web-based email service, and since then has grown to be the leading Arab online community in the region.

“Yahoo is acquiring Maktoob.com for the strong brand and audience it has built over the last nine years and the passionate team they have assembled, which we believe is the strongest in the region,” said Keith Nilsson, senior vice president, Emerging Markets, Yahoo!  “We see great growth potential in both audience and advertising in the Arab world and combining with Maktoob.com will allow us to quickly build our presence there with high quality products. This is a big win for publishers, advertisers, and consumers in the region.”

This acquisition is part of Yahoo!’s larger strategy to grow its business throughout the world’s emerging markets by connecting consumers with the content and services that matter most to them in their local language.  The company's Emerging Markets business group, headquartered in Singapore, is responsible for Yahoo!’s fastest growing markets such as South East Asia, India, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.  Yahoo! has a strong track record of delivering great Internet experiences and helping fuel Internet adoption through partnerships with local developers and content providers. 

Following the acquisition, Maktoob.com will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!.  Ahmed Nassef, the current general manager of Maktoob.com, will continue to lead the Maktoob.com teams and will report to Keith Nilsson.  It is expected that the transaction will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Upon completion of the deal, the remaining Maktoob Group companies – including Souq.com, cashU.com, Araby.com, and Tahadi.com – will operate under a new entity called the Jabbar Internet Group, managed by Samih Toukan.  Yahoo! and the Jabbar Internet Group will continue to have a strong commercial relationship going forward, which will include the promotion of Jabbar companies on the Maktoob.com portal.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Maktoob.com, the pan-Arab Web portal based in Dubai and Amman, has become the biggest portal in the region to apply for a web traffic audit by BPA Worldwide, the global auditor of media.

Maktoob.com is an Arabic and English community, news and entertainment portal, which offers a range of online services including email, discussion forums, news, blogs, chat, games, mobile services, women’s content, sports content, and a variety of other community and web 2.0 services.

“Our vision is to lead the Arab Internet World in providing innovative and leading edge community, communication, content and e-commerce services and solutions” explains Ahmed Nassef, General Manager of Maktoob. ”By committing ourselves to BPA’s rigorous interactive auditing standards, our advertisers and potential advertisers can not only be assured of the reach that we offer, but also access valuable additional data about our visitors that can be used to inform their advertising plans.”

The BPA Interactive Audit service, which utilises Nielsen Online’s SiteCensus technology, provides daily, continuous reporting of traffic.
Users, both publishers and advertisers, can interrogate traffic data of a chosen site at will, reflecting requirements provided by media planners worldwide during a two-year consultation process carried out by BPA in 2006-2007. Using Nielsen Online’s SiteCensus tagging technology the service will provide media owners, advertisers and media buyers with near real-time access to the metrics most commonly used for advertising planning and purchasing decisions.

Stuart Wilkinson, BPA Worldwide’s Managing Director for EMEA, complimented maktoob.com for committing itself to such thorough independent verification and documentation.

“The BPA interactive audit for maktoob.com will provide advertisers and agencies with an assurance that should they choose to invest their budget in this site, they will in fact reach target audiences for specific ads.
BPA has set the bar high with its Interactive Audit which should help media companies like maktoob.com persuasively document the true quality of their 
audience and deliver traffic they can trust.”

The Nielsen Company in conjunction with Dubai Media City today revealed some of the largest companies in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region that have signed up to its Market Intelligence service.

The Maktoob group, Samardy (a Vodafone company), the ITP group, Propertyfinder and Orange are now using Market Intelligence - a service based on a precise site-centric measurement technology that provides competitive benchmarking and market-level information on Web sites for the publishing and advertising industries across the world.

Ahmed Nassef, Vice President Maktoob Group, said, "Using measurement technology from a globally recognised and trusted research provider like Nielsen gives advertisers greater confidence in the accuracy of our numbers and, consequently, drives greater levels of ad spend across our properties."

Diego Sempr?n, Senior Director Commercial Development EMEA, Online, for the Nielsen Company added, "The MENA region is benefitting from a tried, trusted and transparent technology that has helped develop the online advertising market around the world for both small domestic players and large international brands."

Semprun continued, "We are essentially aiming to create a unified advertising market, covering two continents and 13 countries, which will make the Arabic Internet an extremely attractive option for advertisers when it comes to spending their budgets. This is a big first for the region and the caliber of companies already signed up is testament to the huge potential that lies ahead."

Nielsen provides market-leading online audience measurement solutions worldwide.  Nielsen data is the official industry online currency in Australia, China, France, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland as well as being the local currency of choice in Brazil, Japan and Taiwan. Market Intelligence also has strong industry-wide take up in Bulgaria, Greece and Sweden.

To help establish a currency in the Arabic market, and drive its online advertising industry, Nielsen will utilise its global partnership with the BPA who use Nielsen's technology to audit business publishers worldwide to improve the transparency and credibility of the online medium to advertisers.

"BPA chose to work with Nielsen, because like BPA, Nielsen is a globally recognized brand in the media industry. It has cutting edge, patented web measurement and reporting systems in place, and an installed base of media buyer users," said Glenn Hansen, CEO & President BPA Worldwide.

He adds, "The "BPA powered by Nielsen Online" solution offers website traffic metrics providing an industry standard that gives advertisers and media buyers an apples-to-apples comparison when making their marketing decisions. There are a number of web measurement tools available to media owners but this new solution will create a level playing field with a single set of standards - provided on a constant basis and performed by one analytics tool - that advertisers and agencies can trust as accurate. A single, standard web measuring system across BPA membership eliminates any guesswork on why data is different amongst competitive sites."

Mohammed Abdullah, Executive Director, Dubai Media City, said: "Our unique media-cluster environment at Dubai Media City is instrumental in supporting all kinds of media work at the regional level, through the creation of new standards and the application of global best practices, as well as the use of state-of- the-art techniques and mechanisms. As a regional destination that hosts global media organisations, Dubai Media City is confident that our business partner Nielsen's Market Intelligence Solution in the MENA region will effectively guide the publishing and advertising industries across the region to better understand prevailing market conditions and develop appropriate solutions."

The Nielsen Company is planning to enlarge its portfolio in the MENA region over the next two years with more global standards for the measurement of online media including AdRelevance, BuzzMetrics, Video Analytics, Campaign Analysis and NetEffect.

Piyush Mathur, Regional Managing Director MENAP, The Nielsen Company, adds, "We aim to bring relevant media and Internet services that exist in the Nielsen world to the MENA region, in order to demystify different forms of media consumption and their interplay. These services will help in making consumer targeting more precise, a key objective of marketers during this slowdown".