Media Execs In A Round Table Discussion Around Lebanon’s Adspend, A Premiere In The Region
Arabad’s readers will be familiar with the publication’s annual Top 10 Performers issue, which has been running for over 20 years now and ranks brands and media across the MENA region by advertising spend. We have only missed one issue: last year, when the growing controversy around both the figures and the rankings reached fever pitch.
It is unlikely that a consensus will ever be reached when it comes to the
June - July 2020 sensitive topic of regional advertising spend. Most analytics companies rely on a mix of rate cards, estimates, or even ‘guesstimates’ to report adspend. A model that can be wildly inaccurate. At Arabad, we obtain our information from Ipsos, which monitors advertising expenditure according to rate cards. These results, such as they are, are designed to serve as a yardstick to gauge the performance of various sectors and brands.
However, these rate card figures are overhyped and misleading. They do not take into account discounts, barter deals, market nuance, or even specific circumstances on the ground. That’s why, back in February 2020, we gathered the industry’s key stakeholders to properly assess, examine and discuss Ipsos’ monitored figures for the Lebanese market. The goal? To come up with an estimated adspend figure that is as close to reality
as possible, and to break down that spend by media and sector.
During a lively round table discussion—a first of its kind-involving senior media players from the Lebanese market, we did just that. The debate was intense and heated at times, but inspiring and instructive. Those present were Publicis’ Joyce Hallak, Cedric Barsoumian and
Paul Seif, Joyce Tawil of Groupm, Rachid El Khazen of OMD, Maroun Hassoun and Choucrallah Abou Samra of PHD, MCN’S Colette Cherfane and Carole Hayek, George Jabbour, president of the Advertising Association (AA), and Christian Saab from Ipsos.
Why these particular people? Because we believe their agencies represent the majority of advertising spend in Lebanon. As such, they offered the best opportunity for us to reach an acceptable estimate of the country’s adspend.
It is worth mentioning here that this year, and contrary to previous years, Ipsos did not rely solely on rate card data. It used a wide range of metrics to produce an estimated figure that we had to review. That figure was $142 million. In contrast, the monitored rate card figure was an absurd $1.3 billion. Even in a good year, and without the kind of protests that have rocked the country during the past six months, a figure of $1.3 billion is simply insane.
The huge discrepancy between those two numbers meant everyone had to come up with their own deflator – or process – to arrive at a net figure.
Some divided the gross by half. Others went as far as cutting some brand monitored investments by 10. Others removed the political advertising of 2018, which was estimated to be around $20 million. Even online posed a big question mark. After all, measuring digital is another major challenge faced by the industry.
The result was a plethora of numbers and a concerning lack of consensus. This meant we were left to make of these numbers what we could. Because there were several approaches we could take and a wide range of factors to be taken into consideration in order to achieve a net, rather than gross (or rate card), value. We needed to find the one that worked best.
While we lacked direct access to absolute terms of reference, we were able to get a very good idea the data pertaining to Lebanon’s market and form a precise view of adspend across many platforms and a total net of $133 million.
Why is this important? Because the tracking of advertising investments in media is an essential component of the marketing ecosystem. And without reliable data we’re essentially working in the dark.
This initiative was the first positive step towards providing a better of the relative performance of different media during this one-ofa-kind session because of the media executives present. We were therefore able to infer actual results.
It’s crazy when you think about it: instead of possessing universally accepted statistics on the state of our industry at any given point in time, we had to do some algebra just to arrive at an educated guess.
Yet, after two hours of discussion and calculations, we managed to dissect assessment of advertising spend. It was also a step towards a comprehensive analysis of the data available to us. And with reliable and accurate data we have the power to stimulate growth, because such data provides confidence and clarity. Arabad aims to apply next year the same exercise to the GCC with hope that all stakeholders will welcome the initiative.
June - July 2020