Left to right: Dinesh Lalvani, Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, Mohammad Itani and Martin Diessner.

Flip Holding Ltd is delighted to announce the promotion of Yousef Tuqan Tuqan and Mohammad Itani as CEOs for Flip Media and Neo Digital.

Yousef Tuqan Tuqan has been promoted to CEO of Flip Media, with overall responsibility for the development and growth of the largest interactive agency in the Middle East.

An industry veteran with over 11 years of regional experience, Yousef has served as Account Director at Flip Media since 2005, and has been responsible for business development and client servicing for the agency.

“Yousef has been one of our most vocal ambassadors, and has played a leading role in growing our agency into a global network of 150 dedicated Internet professionals.

His passion and experience have been invaluable in maintaining our leadership position, and this promotion is a vote of confidence in his ability to lead Flip Media into its next phase of growth,” said Managing Partner Dinesh Lalvani, Flip’s cofounder.

Mohammad Itani has been promoted to CEO of Neo Digital, Flip’s sister agency and the first dedicated online media agency in the Middle East. Mohammad has served as Head of Media since 2005, and has been instrumental in the growth of the agency and its reach beyond Dubai.

He has also been involved in the development of Neo Digital’s Search Engine Marketing team, which boasts 4 full-time specialists and one of the largest booking volumes in the region.

According to Flip Holdings’ Group CEO Martin Diessner, “Mohammad has shown great leadership in times of ongoing change in the industry, and has earned the respect and admiration of his clients, his team and his partners across the online media landscape.

I am confident that Neo Digital can continue to maintain its position as the fastest-growing and most innovative independent online media agency in the region.”

Managing Partners Dinesh Lalvani and Martin Diessner will continue their daily involvement in the group’s operation from Dubai, with a greater focus on the development of Brand Central, the most powerful enterprise-class advertising management and serving solution in the Middle East; and Chameleon, Flip Media’s complete website content management solution.

According to Dinesh “these key promotions represent a vote of confidence in Yousef and Mohammad to continue to lead their agencies into their next stage of development.

Both have been the faces of Flip Media and Neo Digital since their appointment in 2005, and we are proud to work alongside them as we continue to offer the best and most comprehensive digital marketing solutions in the region.”

Leading online media agency in the Middle East announced that it has been named a Google Advertising Professionals Qualified Company.

Qualification status is only granted to companies meeting specific qualifications set by Google. The firm passed Google's advertising certification program, which included a comprehensive exam and demonstration that the staff can effectively manage a variety of Google AdWords accounts.

Search Marketing function at the agency is run by a team of highly qualified and experienced professionals who has been certified as Google AdWords Professional Individual.

Mohammad Itani, Head of Media says, 'We are extremely delighted that we have attained Google Qualified Company Status. It proves that we have the experience, skill and knowledge to deliver effective and profitable paid advertising campaigns for our clients.'

'We would like to see more and more digital agencies and search marketing firms in the region to become qualified Google AdWords Professional Companies. A certification like this one from a credible third-party like Google will help increase overall industry professionalism and also bring in minimum threshold to gauge suppliers.

Neo Digital creates and manages paid advertising campaigns across multiple networks, including Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In all paid advertising campaigns, Neo Digital focuses on maximizing the return on investment for its clients, delivering the most highly targeted visitors possible to its clients' sites.

SEM spend at Neo Digital in 2007 has gown up by over 200% than in 2006 and still the count is on for a strong 3 more months to the year end.
Neo Digital with its experience of managing pay-per-click management for than 50 clients worldwide continues in its path of providing better search marketing service levels.

Neo Digital, the largest independent online media buying agency in the region was originally established as a sister company of Flip Media in March 2005. In just under two years, Neo Digital has firmly positioned itself as a leading player at the forefront of online media buying agencies and is serving more than 60 clients in the GCC and beyond.

Neo Digital currently holds the largest market share of online advertisers amongst all independent players. Staffed by a team of specialist media buyers and planners, Neo Digital are responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with clients and suppliers, pre-campaign planning and analysis, campaign management and tracking, and post-campaign reporting and auditing.

"Even though online advertising has increased in prominence over the last few years, educating clients about efficiency, reliability, transparency and measurability still remains one of our primary activities", comments Mohammad Itani, Media Manager, Neo Digital. "One of our main responsibilities is to actively source, research and recommend new web portals to our clients, enabling them to personalize communication and extend their reach with relevant audiences in a highly cost effective and targeted way. By utilizing sophisticated campaign management tools, like Brand Central, a 3rd party verified online media tracking service for advertising and media agencies, we are able to optimize our client's advertising campaigns to their full potential", added Mohammad Itani. Another key strength is being able to negotiate highly favorable rates for clients based on the size of market share."

"We recognized at an early stage that establishing a dedicated online media planning and buying unit would bring many advantages to our clients and by separating this activity from our creative business, both Flip Media and Neo Digital have been able to truly focus on providing best of breed online solutions that are impartial and objective, and really deliver outstanding results", added Martin Diessner, CEO, Flip Media.