UAE

The audience for digital advertising in the region is growing tremendously, leaving an impact on traditional media. In the UAE, we witnessed a decrease in the total ad spend of around 9% in 2016 vs 2015. This decrease is mainly highlighted in Newspapers, Magazines and Outdoor media while TV shows an increase of 14% in comparison to 2015. The decrease in Print is very noticeable this year. It dropped by 43% in comparison to the total media. This change is due to the new trend of Online Print as advertisers are focusing on spending their budgets on digital advertising to target the mass audiences. In terms of media agencies ranking in the UAE this year, Starcom Media Vest Group enjoys the number one position followed by MEC similar to last year, while Initiative is the 3rd agency showing a jump from the 4th place in 2015. The top 2 spending categories in the UAE are Real Estate and Cars. Real Estate shows high spend on Outdoor while Cars focus more on Cinema. The leading advertisers in the UAE this year is similar to last year’s ranking, Etisalat and DU. The following spenders are Sedar and Carrefour on total media spend. Finally, we highlight that UAE accounts for 8% of $24.8 billion of the MENA advertising spends in 2016.