The 2008 IPSOS Media Expenditure data is available for download from mediaME. The advertising market in the Middle East grew by around 18% from $9 billion in 2007 to $11 billion in 2008. It seems the region did not bear the brunt of the financial crisis in 2008. In fact, this growth is consistent with the previous year, when expenditure grew from $7 billion to $9 billion.

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It is now clear that the ad market is in the middle of a sharp downturn that began in Q3 2008 and accelerated in Q4. ZenithOptimedia has reduced its forecast for adspend growth in 2009 from 4.0% to -0.2% as the fallout from the financial crisis has spread throughout the real economies of the developed world.

Expanding developing markets counterbalance decline in North America and Western Europe



Advertising expenditure by region

Major media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio, cinema, outdoor, internet) US$ million, current prices. Currency conversion at 2007 average rates.



Major media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio, cinema, outdoor, internet) Year-on-year change (%)



Consumer and corporate confidence has been severely shaken, and the economic outlook is uncertain. The best-informed economic experts are arguing about exactly what has gone wrong, how bad it will get and what should be done about it. Because of the general economic volatility there is greater degree of uncertainty than usual to our forecasts, and we are keeping them under monthly rather than quarterly review.

The US is now officially in recession, as are several countries in Western Europe, while others are almost certainly headed that way. As usual, ad markets in these regions have reacted to recession by shrinking even more quickly than the wider economy. We now expect ad expenditure to decline 5.7% in North America in 2009, and 1.0% in Western Europe. These are well down from our previous forecasts of 0.9% growth and 2.6% growth respectively, which we published just two months ago.

The credit crisis has also slowed the advance of some developing markets, particularly in Asia Pacific and Central & Eastern Europe. We have reduced our forecasts for ad expenditure growth in 2009 from 5.2% to 3.2% in Asia Pacific, and from 12.7% to just 1.5% in Central & Eastern Europe amid fears about the economic stability of markets like Hungary, Turkey and Ukraine. Elsewhere our forecasts remain healthy, and we still expect 14.9% growth in Latin America, and 11.2% growth in the rest of the world. Among the big emerging 'BRIC' markets we forecast continued growth in 2009: from 5% for Russia, through 9% in China and 13% in India, to 30% in Brazil.

The global ad market will be very tough in Q1 2009, and Q2 is unlikely to be much better. But we expect mild recovery to begin in Q3, a year after the start of the downturn, and pick up in Q4 when the year-on-year comparatives will start to get a lot easier. Over the course of 2010 we forecast global ad expenditure to grow 5.5%, followed by 5.8% growth in 2011. We expect the sharp disparity of growth rates between the developed world (which we define as North America, Western Europe and Japan) and the developing world (which we define as everywhere else) to continue. We estimate developing markets will contribute 89% of all ad expenditure growth between 2008 and 2011, and increase their share of the global ad market from 30% to 36% over this period.



Internet advertising continues to grow rapidly as advertisers turn to it for its innovation and accountability, which is particularly important in a recession when every line of a budget must be justified. We still expect internet advertising to grow by 18% in 2009, including 18% growth in North America and 12% in Western Europe. We forecast the internet to take a 15.6% share of global ad expenditure in 2011, 5.2 percentage points ahead of magazines and 5.6 points behind newspapers, having narrowed the gap from 15.1 points in 2008.

The other media we expect to undergo substantial growth in 2009 are cinema and outdoor. Cinema is still a new medium for advertising in the US, and is growing strongly there, and admissions often rise in times of economic difficulty as consumers seek a means of escape. Outdoor contractors are investing in both traditional displays and digital billboards that capture the attention of consumers and advertisers.

Television is also doing relatively well in the downturn. As happened in the previous two downturns (in 1991-1992 and 2001-2002) advertisers will continue to shift their expenditure from secondary media to television, being familiar with its power to build brands. Like cinema admissions, television viewing tends to rise in recessions because it offers escapism, and at a much lower price per hour to the consumer. The rise of the developing ad markets - where television tends to account for a much higher share of expenditure than in the developed markets - is also boosting the global profile of television, which we expect to attract a record 38.5% share of global ad expenditure in 2010 and 2011.

Advertising Expenditure Forecasts is published quarterly priced £395. It may be ordered in hard or soft copy from www.zenithoptimedia.com

Emirates Business 24/7 reports that despite huge expectations of online ad spend in the next few years, an expert in the UAE said the print media will remain the leader in attracting the money spent on advertising.

Neither TV nor outdoor is expected to rival print media, said Sami Raffoul, General Manager of Pan Arab Research Centre. The internet will also lag behind as an advertising medium, he said, because of factors such as internet illiteracy and difficulty of access due to the language barrier.

According to Raffoul a moderate internet user can enumerate at least 100 websites dealing with careers, real estate, general interest, sports or business in the UAE. Audiences of the same age group and interests in different geographical locations, such as Jeddah or Cairo, will cite a different 100 sites. "In other words, the club of websites likely to be visited by an audience is influenced by the local community and personal needs and the universality of information sought," he said.

He said that an internet user in a place like Egypt or Morocco would only visit an Indian or Malaysian website for a specific reason, and that too rarely. Advertising pop-ups that might appear in the local languages of these portals will definitely mean nothing to the viewer, even if he of she has a rudimentary understanding of the languages used.

Raffoul said that advertisers' geographical locations will continue influencing Internet advertising, even if the internet was without any borders. "One news website, for example, might claim that it has received hundreds of thousands of visitors in a certain month, but who are they and where is their location and would they be interested in viewing an advertisement for a local bank in the UAE?

We don't know," he added. The reason why internet ad spend seems so huge, he said, is that advertisers would need to target numerous websites to receive the desired viewership. On the contrary, in a newspaper environment, a single advertisement can be placed for a specific rate, undoubtedly higher, yet reaching a wider audience, Raffoul said.