Effective Measure took a new step towards upgrading and enhancing digital advertising in the MENA region through its first Syrian client, Aliqtisadi.com. The Syrian website, being the online portal of the country's leading economic bi-monthly, is part of prominent media group, Haykal Media that publishes a variety of English, Arabic, print and online publications in Syria. Haykal Media Group's Sales Manager Soud al-Atassi was quoted: "We are pleased to announce sealing our deal with Effective Measure; we believe that hand-in-hand, we raise the bar of digital advertising not only in Syria but throughout the Middle East.

It is a major step vis-a-vis online advertising, and more are likely to come in the immediate future." Other sites that have recently tagged with Effective Measure include Sarmady and Ikoo networks, fashion.azyya.com, argaam.com and Ewaseet. Effective Measure grew to 1.8 billion page views last month, a 400 million increase in 30-days.

Dinesh Arasaratnam, Commercial Director at Effective Measure, said: "We welcome leading Syrian portal Aliqtisadi.com onto Effective Measure and we look forward to further working with their team who are successfully promoting the Digital space in Syria. Last month Effective Measure showed that there are 464,724 visitors from Syria to our network of sites spending on average 7.22 minutes online per session.

We of course expect this to increase as more sites from Syria opt into Effective Measure. The benefit for sites of being on Effective Measure is that they are in front of Agency screens across the region at the crucial time of campaign planning."