Mediastow

Smartphone users in Saudi Arabia have higher preference for Arabic applications than UAE and Jordan

editor — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:14:51 -0800

A new Arab Advisors Group’s survey of cellular users in Saudi Arabia reveals insightful details on the smartphones adoption and usage patterns in the Kingdom. The survey revealed that 47% of the respondents who use applications in Saudi Arabia prefer to use them in the Arabic language compared to 8.2% in each of Jordan and the UAE. Arab Advisors Group projects the Smartphone applications combined annual revenues in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan to grow from US$ 44 million in 2011 to US$ 210 million in 2015.

The Arab Advisors Group concluded a ground breaking survey of cellular users in Saudi Arabia probing smartphones adoption and usage. The survey revealed that iOS (iPhone) topped the list with 40% share of smartphones operating systems (calculated based on handsets’ brands). Blackberry ranked second at 38%. Almost half of smartphone users prefer the Arabic language for their applications.

Over 300 delegates will discuss and deliberate the ongoing trends in the regional smartphone ecosystem at Arab Advisors’ Smart Handheld Summit which will be held on December 5 & 6, 2011 in Dubai. Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is the Strategic Summit Partner. Qualcomm is sponsoring the summit which is also supported by AppsArabia, Microsoft, nPario, Teletimes International, Comm., ITP CommsMEA, MediaME, TelecomWatch, FTTH Council, UBA, The Market Buzz, MediaStow, DMTV and Tech Tech.

A new major cellular phone survey of cellular users in Saudi Arabia was concluded by the Arab Advisors Group in October 2011. The survey report, “Saudi Smartphone Survey 2011” was released on November 3, 2011 and provides the results of a major comprehensive survey of cellular users in the Kingdom. The survey covered general cellular usage habits; smartphone adoption and usage habits; smartphone awareness, cellular handsets’ brands and models in addition to tablets availability among respondents. The report has 56 pages and 65 exhibits.

“The Smart Handheld Summit comes in the context of booming Smartphone markets in the region and enhanced interest in the applications and content space. Based on the surveys’ findings, the Arab Advisors Group projects the Smartphone applications combined annual revenues in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan to grow from US $44 million in 2011 to US $210 million in 2015; with Saudi Arabia’s market generating around three quarters of the combined total.” Jawad J. Abbassi, Founder and General Manager of Arab Advisors Group, said.

Respondents were randomly called through a randomly generated table of cellular phone numbers for each of the four cellular operators in Saudi Arabia: STC, Mobily, Zain, and Bravo. The survey results encompass answers from 770 cellular users that passed rigorous quality control checks. Quality control was conducted by Arab Advisors Group’s team. The survey yields a confidence level of 99% with a margin of error of less than 5%.

“The survey revealed that 57% and 52% of iPhone and Blackberry users, respectively, use applications through their smartphones, while 44% of Symbian smartphone users use applications. 47% of those who use applications in Saudi Arabia prefer applications in the Arabic language compared to 8.2% in each of Jordan and the UAE.” Mr. Jawad Abbassi, added.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Kodak, GoNabit and Sony to speak at the Internet Show Middle East

editor — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:21:47 -0700

The Internet Show Middle East, presented by Yahoo! Maktoob, will include senior level speakers from facebook, Linkedin, Kodak, Sony, Du and Etisalat, who will all be giving their insights and tips into every area of internet related business.

The Internet Show is being held on 27-28th September 2011 at ADNEC, Abu Dhabi. It is the Middle East's best attended and biggest event for digital marketing and online business where the latest technology and hottest internet business solutions are highlighted.

With a growth in spending on digital media advertising by 45% in 2011 in the MENA region according to Google Inc - it is crucial for companies to be up to date with the newest technologies and have the opportunity to hear from those who are already delivering great ROI.

The 5 conference topics to be covered are Social Media, Cloud Computing, E-commerce & Payments, Digital Advertising and Content Management.

We have secured the biggest names from the biggest brands to come and talk about the biggest issues in the digital world: du, Kodak, facebook, LinkedIn, Cobone, Sony, Etisalat, Majid Al Futtaim, GoNabit, Souq,com, Abu Dhabi Government, Wee World, Vodafone, Mediastow, Dubizzle.com, Audi, Zain, Rotana Hotel, DHL Express, DUBAL, The Medinge Group, Pringo, Dubai International Airport, Chouradviser, Flip Media, Mashreq Bank, Dubai Duty Free, Starcom, Al Rajhi Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and many more.

Dramatic growth for online forums and social networks in Dubai

editor — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:58:37 -0700

Dubai's share in mentions in online forums and social networks has grown dramatically over the past few months. In May, the mentions outnumbered Hong Kong, according to the results of a survey released today by Mediastow, the award winning media intelligence agency in the Middle East.

The study which monitored Dubai's online mentions vis a vis Singapore and Hong Kong showed that while Singapore continued to enjoy the highest number of mentions, Dubai had overtaken Hong Kong in online forums and social networks, and was bridging the gap in news, blogs, comments and reviews.

Facebook is being outsmarted by new social media entrants

editor — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:35:08 -0700

Mediastow, a leading media intelligence company in the Middle East, anticipates that leading social media website Facebook will lose its popularity in 10 to 15 years.

Mo Elzubeir, Founder & Managing Director of Mediastow, says: "When it comes to the Internet, everything is cyclical. The fate of MySpace demonstrates how a strong player can quickly fade into oblivion. Looking further back, Geocities represents another similar example."

GeoCities was originally founded in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet (BHI). In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to place their web pages. The "cities" were named after real cities or regions according to their content.

Ten years after Yahoo bought GeoCities, the company announced that it would shut down the United States GeoCities service on October 26, 2009, and GeoCities websites actually became unavailable from next day. There were at least 38 million user-built pages on GeoCities before it was shut down.
Elzubeir added: "Currently, there is already a debate on whether Facebook is bleeding users from its launch countries in North America. While it is possible to blame seasonality or even saturation, I believe there are other more important factors at play here."

According to Inside Facebook's data service, Facebook lost 6 million users in USA. last month, dropping from 155.2 million to 149.4 million. That is the first time U.S. numbers dropped in more than a year. It also lost 1.52 million users in Canada, dropping to 16.6 million -- an 8% drop -- and 100,000 each in the U.K., Norway and Russia.

Total Facebook users were still up 1.7% thanks to growth in countries where the service got popular later, like Mexico and Brazil. But huge drops in the countries where Facebook first became popular can't be good news. It suggests that there is a saturation point where people begin to burn out on the service, according to the same source.

Facebook will continue to "grow" overall in numbers, because of "new countries". In other words, its growth is powered by the periphery of the market, while its core market is weakening. Elzubeir added: "Newer entrants, such as Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram amongst others are offering better subsets of what Facebook offers and doing a better job at it. As a result, I think we will continue to see more people moving away from Facebook."

Elzubeir pointed out that privacy concerns and content ownership are other issues facing Facebook.
He added: "Privacy concerns will continue to be an issue, but I think Facebook is failing to learn from the mistakes of Geocities/Yahoo. Owning all your users' content is eventually going to backfire."
Elzubeir concludes that Facebook will stop being relevant in 10-15 year time at the latest.

Social media has become a crucial element in today’s communications strategy, says Mediastow

editor — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:48:12 -0700

Social media has become a crucial element in today’s communications strategy, effectively supporting conventional media, according to Mediastow, a leading media monitoring agency.

“This type of digital media does not pose a threat to conventional media; on the contrary social media plays a great role by offering Arab users an interactive communications channel that connects them with main electronic portals of the traditional media, including dailies, magazines, radio and TV channels,” said Mo Elzubeir, Managing Director and Founder of Mediastow.

Speaking at a two-day workshop organised by the company for its research and evaluation teams, Elzubeir said that social media complements conventional media through maximization of traffic on websites by linking end-users of media content to these websites, be they newspapers, magazines, television or radio.

Elzubeir added that there is a significant increase in the number of organizations from the government and private sectors that want to adopt social media in their marcom campaigns.

While advertising in print, broadcast and OOH media has been witnessing a decline in interest, uptake in social media as a marketing tool continues to gain momentum. Elzubeir said the focus should now be on adding the social component to traditional media publishers and broadcasters in order to engage their readers and watchers if they wanted to bring advertisers back to the table.

“Social media works for any industry or sector that needs to engage with its customers or clients, in government or private sector, regardless of size. There is growing awareness amongst marketing practitioners in the region of the efficacy of social media in boosting two-way interaction, instead of using a monologue approach of the conventional media,” Elzubeir said.

Mediastow has a group of consultants who offer counseling services to customers to familiarize them with what their stakeholders are saying on social media and how to respond to their comments, be they positive, neutral or negative, in an effort to sustain brand equity and maintain their corporate values in the industries they work in.

Social media expert calls for more native Arabic content on the web, which is now just 1.4%

editor — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:37:15 -0700

A noted social media expert has urged Arab communities to use standard Arabic on the web that will let the outside world to treat Arabs as an integrated community and prevent the Arabic language from getting marginalised on the web through different colloquial versions.

Mohamed Elzubeir, Managing Director, Mediastow who is sponsoring the Click 4.0, the leading digital marketing conference to be held in Dubai from June 20 to 24, 2010, said: “Arabic is the language of government, media, education and businesses for many countries in the Middle East and North Africa. We were pleased that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE are among the first to get internet addresses in Arabic, following final approval by ICANN. This represents the first major change to the internet domain name system since its creation in the 1980s. However, the real issue lies in using a standard Arabic that everyone understands in the Arab world so that our content on the web becomes bigger in size and usage”.

Over 20% of Arabic speakers have internet access, resulting in approximately 100 million users. Arabic is the fifth most widely spoken language in the world and yet, despite dramatic recent growth of internet penetration in the Arab World, only 1.4% of online digital content is in Arabic.

Elzubeir added: “Now names could be registered using the country's Arabic suffix. Arabic websites generally did not have that option because Arabic characters are written right to left, conflicting with Latin suffixes written left to right. This will enhance the web penetration especially amongst people who do not know English so they will be more comfortable using Arabic letters instead.”

Elzubeir said: “There is a paucity of native Arabic content in the web. It is not acceptable anymore that Arabs use English alphabet to write Arabic in their chats and social media websites. Adding salt to the wound, the lack of Arabic support in software is a big stumbling block in enhancing the Arabic web presence. We need to encourage people to write in real Arabic terminology and preserve the Arabic alphabet which will result in more Arabic content on the web.”

The quantum of Arabic content on the web is very low. This has created a vicious cycle, where the lack of content discourages people to search, which in turn de-motivates content creators from publishing in Arabic.

Standard Arabic is what brings the Arab world together, and what makes knowledge transfer easy between Arab countries. The usage of standard Arabic makes the published content understood by everyone in the Arab world and, most importantly, easily searched for.

“On the other side, colloquial Arabic will hinder the development of the Arab web by having 22 versions used on the web, instead of having one language used by 22 countries, reducing the impact of our language with the outside world,” added Elzubeir.

Regional and international organizations and government institutions agree that this lack of Arabic language material online inhibits the ability of Arabic speakers to effectively use the internet to gain information and exchange ideas.

Dubai Internet City backs Middle East Digital Marketing Event

editor — Sun, 16 May 2010 12:16:15 -0700

There is no doubt that digital marketing has emerged as the new channel for brands in the Middle East to increase their market share. The industry received a boost this week with TECOM Investments' Dubai Internet City confirming official support of Click 4.0 - the Digital Marketing Event for the Middle East.

With a rich 4-year history of providing digital marketers a platform to air their concerns and shortfalls as well as potential solutions to taking the market forward, Click 4.0 will on the 21st of June this year provide a new level of learning never before seen in similar events.

"The dynamics of the marketing industry are very different from others, wherein things change overnight. A simple example is Facebook, which added 100 million users in 9 months. For marketers to adapt their branding plans within such a short time-frame is now common practice and this is why it is so important to have the right tools, knowledge and adaptability in your day-to-day marketing operations. Click 4.0 is bringing together the leaders in their field but that's only part of the package. We're offering a platform of never-before seen interactivity. I can't reveal everything here but suffice it to say that Dubai Internet City's support is evidence of the government's increased support of key events which influence business positively in the UAE and the region," says Elizabeth Ricciardelli, Director of Click 4.0.

Among the key issues up for discussion at Click 4.0 will be tracking and metrics, transparency, case studies by Jumeirah Group and Burger King, SEO for Sales, the death and re-birth of print media and the new age Muslims market. It is sponsored by Yahoo!, Ikoo, Nielsen and Mediastow, Click 4.0.

Marketing in Arabic is biggest challenge facing Middle East marketers, reveals Click 4.0

editor — Sun, 16 May 2010 12:07:34 -0700

In a recent survey conducted by the International Quality & Productivity Centre (IQPC), organizers of Click 4.0 conference, 51% of marketers in the Middle East say their biggest challenge was marketing in Arabic.
Mohamed Elzubeir, Head of Mediastow, sponsor of Click 4.0, the leading digital marketing conference to be held in Dubai from June 20 to 24, 2010, says: "Digital marketing is becoming increasingly common among Gulf businesses and marketers for reaching out to their stakeholders with punchy messages."

Elzubeir revealed that these marketers have started to combine multiple channels in their digital marketing campaigns, which are yielding concrete results.

The IQPC survey sought to gauge what marketers across all industries in the region felt about critical topics, such as social media, integration of digital marketing into the traditional campaign mix and tackling transparency issues.

Nearly 73% of the 1,048 respondents named Saudi Arabia as the country they are most likely to focus on for their digital marketing in 2010-2011.

"In a country of almost 30 million, where 40% of the population consists of Arabic speaking natives, there has been a rapid increase in global media and consultancies competing to do business with local companies and brands in their native language," commented Elzubeir.

Elzubeir said: "The tech-savvy nature of the people living in the Gulf is reflected in the fact that it has become a primary market for most multinational IT vendors. The Push and Pull digital marketing is well exploited in the region by marketers, thanks to factors like advanced ICT infrastructure, social media penetration and a tech-savvy target audience. Governments, businesses, schools, banks, universities and media are all putting their resources on the web in order not to miss the boat."

Elizabeth Ricciardelli, Director of Click 4.0, says, "The partnership of Mediastow as a sponsor of Click 4.0 reflects mutual commitment to the digital marketing industry, this is an event of choice for learning from the best in the industry and Mediastow is the region's key media research specialist company. This partnership underlines the need for concerted efforts by all players in the regional industry to drive digital marketing ahead and stand shoulder to shoulder with the more established world markets."

Elzubeir said that a major problem in this part of the world is that marketers are not being shown what value the digital campaigns are providing them in reaching their customers.

He added: "We need to provide marketers with the necessary tools to gauge the success of their digital campaigns, which in turn could be the best tool to be put on the management board's table to ask them for more money for digital marketing because simply the message is put across to customers via a cost effective channel."

"Portraying the efficiency of digital marketing quantifiably is what is required at this stage and this is where regional agencies like Mediastow fits in," emphasized Ricciardelli.

The new acquisitions and alliances in the region point to a robust and sustained future for the digital marketing industry in the region, added Elzubeir.

At the recent partnership launch between Facebook and Connect Ads, it was revealed that 9.7 million people in the region are part of the social networking platform, providing a great opportunity for brands to actively engage directly with this untapped consumer base.

"The Internet is a great tool for advertisers as it provides them with the tools to effectively engage with the region's online consumers through various sophisticated targeting capabilities and innovative engagement opportunities. Online is definitely the way forward and our region is on the right track," Ricciardelli concluded.

Mediastow launches new research portal for editors and journalists

editor — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:15:37 -0700

Mediastow, the media intelligence agency in the Mena region, launched the region's first-of-its-kind research portal for editors, giving them free access to the company's database of print and online articles.

Mohamed Elzubeir, head of Mediastow, said the move was aimed at enabling editors to research background material generated in the Middle East on topics or companies for their articles.

"We have discussed with various reporters and editors and found that they would like to be able to access information on companies or specific topics and what has been written about them - not just online but in print too," added Elzubeir. "The new portal will allow them to see almost any article written in the Middle East on a specific topic or company not just online but in print, saving these editors a lot of time."

Editors and writers can now register here to receive their personal user name and password to the portal. Detailed instructions on how to use the portal are on YouTube.

Mediastow unveils region’s first integrated platform for print, broadcast and social media monitoring and analysis

editor — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:55:25 -0800

Mohamed Elzubeir, head of Mediastow

Mediastow, the leading media intelligence agency in the MENA region, launched the region’s first-of-its-kind integrated platform for social media, print and broadcast monitoring, analysis and measurement.

Mohamed Elzubeir, head of Mediastow, said the move was aimed at enabling businesses to monitor print, broadcast and social media with a fully fledged and integrated approach. The new system’s capabilities are backed up by high-quality operational and maintenance support available worldwide.

“With the evolution of the social media, every blogger is a journalist, exercising a significant impact on any company. It is therefore very critical for a company to know what bloggers are saying and what impact they have on stakeholders,” said Elzubeir commenting on the new integrated monitoring platform.

Elzubeir added: “The new system offers an important tool to companies to understand their position within the social, broadcast and print media. The service is delivered in two packages: DIY (Do It Yourself) with training provided by Mediastow or fully managed by Mediastow analysts.”

Cost-wise, the new system will minimize print, broadcast and social media monitoring and make it more commoditized, in line with Mediastow’s vision for the MENA region.

Leading brands are increasingly seeking to track online conversations and engage with customers in real-time. Mediastow continues to invest in developing cutting-edge technologies that compete on an international standard.

The digital interaction amongst stakeholders of any company was never more active as it is today. The Internet could be a key battleground between rivals where a single 140 characters tweet could affect the share price of any company. This requires companies to keep an eye on what is going on in the cyber world.

“We decided to integrate three media disciplines into one channel of monitoring and analysis to educate the market on the importance of every media outlet, whether it is broadcast, web or print. We are equipped to monitor every segment of viewership and readership in a cost effective and reliable methodology,” said Elzubeir.

“Monitoring social media will help companies to develop new approaches to the way they talk to their customers. Monitoring this kind of media is the starting point for engagement, interaction and advocacy of customers.”

Mediastow’s new integrated service helps companies and organizations track trends and identify their sources, allowing communications specialists to engage directly with their stakeholders, emphasized Elzubeir.