Dana Adhami is a pioneering figure in the Middle East's digital media field. She is now the Head of New Business & Strategy at Catch Interactive, and provides us with insights into the latest trends and where the market is heading.

Q1. Kindly tell us about yourself, your career and your current role at your agency.

I have dual roles of new business and strategy at Catch.  Previous to that, I was responsible for managing the media unit at Catch for over two years, by making sure that all online plans and media schedules are aligned with client objectives and the diverse offering online provides. Recently, I was promoted to head new business and strategy for the agency where I am responsible for developing digital strategic insights for brands, researching & developing new online media opportunities for integration and driving Catch along with my team forward through thought leadership and innovation.

Q2. As one of the leading online media agencies, tell us about the pace of this media's evolution throughout the past couple of years.

It took TV 36 years to reach a large sizable audience, and radio about 13 years, online however took 5 years to grow into the mass medium it is today.   The pace of this medium is exponential, both on a global and regional level.  If we look closely at the Middle East, where online was purely about a 468x60 standard banner advertising not long ago, the dynamics have changed tremendously.

Today, marketing managers and interactive agencies are being challenged to raise the bar online. Display banners are no longer key, and have long ago been removed from the online advertising mix. 
Nowadays, new standards have been introduced in addition to new benchmarks.  Some of the  standards include specialized targeting such as contextual, behavioral, keywords, placement targeting, new banner formats, rich media platforms, among a few.  Our new benchmarks on the other hand, revolve around accountable ROI, digital versus traditional integration, innovative creativity and extending brands into interactive and engaging experiences.

One of the major positive changes in the last year or so, is the full adoption of search marketing and its importance in building brands and driving sales.  With Google having recently set up offices in the region, we are bound to see higher media spends on this medium, resulting in continuous change of the online media dynamic.

The pace is healthy, and indicates solid and positive growth, however I still feel that it is still a learning curve for all of us. Online advertising extends beyond a 30 second spot or a still visual that has set rules and dynamics.  As technologies change and mindsets evolve, new innovations will definitely be introduced into our medium.

Soon, currently existing in overseas markets, the concept of online advertising will evolve and grow into a larger picture to be known as digital advertising where more than one digital platform is integrated, i.e. mobile, search, Bluetooth, virtual worlds, viral…etc.   The meaning of integration will soon encompass integration of diverse digital touch points for effective reach and newness.

I also believe that clients will alter their mindset to start searching for return on involvement measures rather than the typical return on investment we all get grilled for.  I see that the future of online advertising evolving and developing into a new concept, what I like to call ‘engagement advertising’

Q3. What's preventing clients from committing a higher percentage of their advertising budget to online media, to better correspond to the time that consumers are spending on the Internet?

The reasons are numerous, and have been previously discussed by many online professionals.  Many say it’s fear of the unknown, yet listening to clients’ arguments who some claim that it is their online agencies who fail to challenge and push the envelope.

In my opinion, I feel that the reason for clients downsizing online budgets is to do with budgeting itself.  I believe that clients have been using and still are using the same budgeting schemes their existing or previous organizations instilled on them.  The mechanic needs to change as time and consumers change. 

Rather than fixating budgets on expenses, margins or forecasts of sales, clients need to extend the methodology to start introducing a percentage of innovation into their marketing plans/budgets.  The percentage can vary between 10-20%, but should allow clients to visit new territories with their brands and connect with new customers, one of them should be online or interactive initiatives.

Another reason is agency integration.  Now that many of the global agency networks have set their interactive departments, we are finding that the correspondence between the digital planners and traditional planners is a little inconsistent.  Digital planners are usually brought in after the media plan is set, and are used as complimentary vehicles to the communication mix, this usually results in budgets being finalized for traditional and downscaled for online.  Traditional agencies need to integrate their digital arms at early stages of planning to allow proper correspondence for consumer medium consumption.

Lack of metrics, research and auditing are also hindering online budgets from expanding.  This is taking time as the region progresses, however will mark change once audited and valid data is brought to place.

Finally, and I believe is a main reason for online budgets being set back is directly linked to talent, the more passionate and self-involved people become about the medium both on client and agency side, the more we will find that the idea of selling high budgets will become easy.

Q5. Would you say that online advertising on the region's major websites is fairly priced and what kind of impact on prices can we expect from the lower-price opportunities available on international sites and ad networks like Google Adwords?

Yes I believe they are fairly priced, especially when comparing to international sites and ad networks.  However, our market is unique and online rates are representative and directly linked to the value of communicating with the type of user using the medium in this region.  The internet in the US or UK is widely mass, with high levels of audience fragmentation and income levels, hence the low prices.   Also, a high contributing factor is the technological infrastructure available in those countries.  These platforms are deemed high in service diversification and user penetration, allowing online advertising to be low-priced.

 In our region, however, online is still growing at a pace to become mass, and the current online population is considered niche as far as income level and psychographics.  However, as more telecommunication companies branch out in offering and infrastructure within the region, the more this will impact internet connection prices.  Also this will result in an increased online population and internet usage creating standardized cost-effective and relevant prices for the industry.

Q6. Any closing words and/or a prediction for online advertising in 2008?

My closing words are for those who do spend budgets online both on the agency and client side. My predictions for 2008 start with my belief that clients will spend more time looking into ways to succeed online. This in effect will benefit and threaten many.

The CTR approach (Click Through Rate) will alter in importance, as more clients try to create meaningful interactive experiences with their customers, through involvement and relationship.

There will be large integration between TV (video) and the internet, in a way the internet is becoming more like TV and vice versa.  We will find that brands will embrace video within their online communication to sustain synergy across all mediums. This will definitely start pulling budgets from TV due to online’s capacity of extending the experience further through interactivity, higher user control and video streaming capability.

I hope, but this could be wishful thinking, that mobile marketing will start to integrate as a synergistic and consistent platform to online advertising, allowing interactive agencies a new level of creativity and user engagement, however only 2008 will reveal so.

Ziad Khammar is the trailblazing CEO of AME Info, and a long-serving pioneer in the region's online market. We spoke to him about the Digital Marketing 2008 conference which AME Info is organizing.

Q1. Kindly give us a brief introduction about yourself and your current position.
I have been living in Dubai for a little less than 2 decades. Over a year go, shortly after AME Info was acquired by EMAP for over $25 million, I joined as the General Manager.
I oversee the operation with the key aim of growing the business and maintaining our position as the leading business online resource in the Middle East.

Q2. Would you say that online media and services now available in the Middle East are capable of delivering the requirements of marketers, and are on par with international Internet media tools? 
I would somewhat agree with that statement, as there is a part of the media and services market that has moved at the pace driven by requirements of advertisers. The savvy and more experienced advertisers have pushed their own organisation and agencies to raise standards and on some occasions, be ahead of the game in comparison to international standards. There are some agencies and websites who have done a great job at offering internationally accepted ad serving technology and traffic measurement tools.
The industry is moving along at a fair pace and the reality is that there are many marketers who have not gone online yet, especially the major large advertisers from KSA, and we cant expect them all to jump immediately and practice the latest and most innovative digital marketing techniques before going through traditional methods and learning what works and what doesn’t work for their brand. I, as many others, want the market to move faster but in reality we are moving at the right pace for the majority of marketers.
 

Q3. What, in your opinion, are the main obstacles to more rapid growth in online advertising expenditure in the Middle East and how's 2008 looking so far?
1) Auditing and transparency: Clients have been demanding audits to be done across all media for years but I still see large multinationals still heavily spending with a large number of non audited media. I think a major obstacle to rapid growth is larger marketers not putting their foot down and saying NO to non audited media, print or digital.
Our last ABCe audit during Oct 2007, reported that we attracted 883,994 business readers to our website. To my knowledge, there isn’t a single regional magazine or newspaper that even comes to attracting this large an audience of business readers. Majority of these titles are non audited and still command larger pieces of advertising budgets.
We have some forward looking clients who spend a majority of their budget with audited media and are taking full advantage of reaching a huge business audience.  For the market to grow faster, clients need to take the initiative to stop spending on questionable media and invest in those who are aiming to be transparent. Such initiatives will force all media to get audited, marketers to spend their budgets more confidently and thus take the whole market up to a new level.
2) Lack of expertise: A major concern is the lack of digital expertise in the market including digital media planners, designers, account handlers and marketing managers. The high staff turnover rates occurring in the region and the huge lack of digital marketing experienced or passionate people should impact growth.

Q4. AME Info is an ideal example of a leading portal aimed at business users. How mature is the online business media scene in the Middle East, and is there a substantial and growing number of advertisers targeting such users/readers?
Online business media continues to mature as most marketers are aware that the highest reaching media in the office place is the computer/internet. I don’t have exact statistics, but the one common element between all business people during working hours is that they are working on a computer/laptop and can be reached through business websites or email. AME Info’s audited traffic peaks during working hours and with just under a million business readers, is enough justification that if the net is not included in the media mix, marketers will not be reaching this audience during the important decision making working hours.
Advertisers are growing as we have built an extremely strong brand, are regularly audited and currently the largest audited business media in the region. Our business is healthy, we are growing year on year and we are confident that we will continue to see high growth in the next few years

Q5. In 2006, EMAP acquired AME Info. How does AME Info's business integrate into EMAPs other activities in the region?
EMAP have been in the region for several years as the owners of MEED, the premium business intelligence provider and more lately with the successful launch of the Dubai Lynx Advertising Festival.  AME Info provides broad coverage of a wide range of sectors for business executives whilst MEED’s portfolio includes the well known magazine Middle East Economic Digest, specialist conferences and events as well as a website. These brands are all very strong and well known in their own right.  The products compliment each other and so we all work closely together to benefit from shared learning and experience at both a local and international level. This gives us a strong competitive advantage.

Q6. The Digital Marketing 2008 Conference is a pioneering initiative, what are the goals that you as organizers look towards achieving, and what kind of impact can you see it having on the industry as a whole?
After hearing for years that no one is taking the initiative to educate the market, conduct research and share ideas, we decided to do it ourselves. It is our first event and we hope to get industry professionals within an environment to learn and share their experiences. Our research showed that the lack of market data was a key tool needed to convince upper management to spend more online. In addition, marketers wanted to hear other companies’ success stories and how they got their organisations to move from traditional to digital.
The highlight of the event this March 24-27 will be the opportunity to be the first to receive exclusive Middle East research commissioned specifically for this event on business people in the region, Arab women and young Arab teens conducted by 2 highly respected research consultancies; You Gov and Real Opinions. We hope this event will be able to contribute to educating and raising awareness on how digital marketing can impact their business, and provide tools that marketers and agencies alike can take away and implement within their organisation that will positively impact campaign results.

Q7. Where do you see the online media market in the region going from here on the publisher, agency and client sides?
I would rather not differentiate the 3 as I truly believe that the market will only grow if we learn from past mistakes, understand more about the variance in deliverables when it comes to traditional vs online and try our best to get all 3 groups working together. Our event is aimed at bringing together all 3 groups in the same room to share experiences and therefore enable each individual to make their own digital marketing campaigns a success.  Our aim is to ensure that everyone will benefit from the already massive growth and the opportunities to come.

Duri Ajrami is Managing Director of Mind Share Interaction and has been a pioneering figure in the region's online advertising scene for several years, working on both the media selling and buying sides, playing a key role in educating clients on the value of online media.

Q. Kindly give us a brief intro about yourself.

I am an online marketing fanatic, and would like to believe I played some role in the formation of the digital media scene in our region since 1998. Since starting the first online sales unit in arabia.com in 1998, I grew with Arabia to become the Sales & Marketing Director in 2002 based in Dubai, and then moved to launch the first Internet Media House in our region: NetAdvantage in 2003 which represents today the leading regional websites like Aljazeera.net, Alsaha.com, Hawaaworld, Kooora.com. In 2005 I joined forces with Dubai Internet City and

The British Standards Institute (BSI) to establish the Arab Internet Standards Organization, a pioneering initiative for creating Quality Standards for websites. I also started IGENCY, which later was merged into MindShare Interaction, the digital media arm of M Group in the MENA region.

Q. You worked on the media side, selling online advertising, and now you're on the online media buying side. How has the industry evolved on both sides?

The industry has changed 180 degrees since I started in it 9 years ago. From a handful of generic websites, to 100s of vertical, highly trafficked, specialized online portals. And from a buyers market where a few clients dominated the dos and don’ts of online advertising, to a sellers market, where websites applied their own rules and regulations and rates on an eagerly growing list of hungry online advertisers.

Q. What's your view on the current percentage of online expenditures in the region relative to other media? Can you mention any numbers in this regard?

Its still embarrassingly too low. Despite the fact that in some Arab countries internet penetration has reached close to 40%, those countries still spend less than 1-5% of their budgets online, even when those budgets concern IT based products / services. It is growing rapidly, but not fast enough to meet internet usage growth, and certainly not fast enough to mimic global trends.

Q. What is the level of online awareness among clients in the region and the levels of 'online strategies and presence' of major brands?

Still very low, very few leading brands have tested the market well enough to create a stand alone online marketing strategy, as most of the agencies still do not possess the adequate amount of knowledge and expertise, and even resolve to push their clients online. For many it is still a second thought, mainly because of resistance to change, they still find more comfort on the pages of print media and TV screens.

Q. There is a sense in the Arab World that online advertising is a Dubai-centric, or GCC only, activity. Why is that, considering the number of potential client and already existing users in Egypt and the Levant countries?

Very simply all the leading multinational agencies, who manage the leading brands are either entirely based in Dubai, or have their key account management teams here, thus most of strategic budgeting happens here. This is why all leading portals have established regional offices in Dubai, and these offices generate their highest income as they are closest to the “main tabs” of budgeting and decision making.

Q. Tell us about some of the major projects/campaigns of MindShare in the online field.

We are working on diverse online projects with many of our key clients, that in addition to typical online marketing activities, also involve digital branding, information architecture, and community building. The list is long, but to mention a few: HSBC, Coca-Cola, Nestle, MTC, NBK, Nike, Motorola, SABB, IBM, Al Aan are a few of the active clients we have been working with over the past few months.