Pan arab

Media Monitoring Director 2016 was a very difficult year in the MENA region due to economic, political, and security problems... The crisis affected the advertising expenditures in the biggest market in the region, the Pan-arab market. TV witnessed an insignificant growth of 0.3% from $8.69 billion in 2015 to $8.72 billion in 2016 spread over 76 monitored TV satellite channels. The substantial fall however, was in the Print industry with a drop of around $56 million compared to 2015. Newspapers are suffering with an 86% decrease in budget compared to last year and a 21% decrease on Magazines. The shift to Online played a big role in this drop. The top 4 brands in 2016 remain the same as last year with a change between 3rd and 4th positions. The leading brand in the Pan-arab market is SAUDI TELECOM followed by SEDAR. PEPSI rose from 4th place to the 3rd and Dettol moved to 4th place. In Print, the situation was different. The National Bank of Egypt lost its first place standing, which it held for the past 3 years and was replaced in 2016 by DIOR followed by Chanel, BVLGARI and Rolex all of which are international luxury brands. As for the number one media agency based on advertising expenditures, Starcom Mediavest group kept its position as number one followed by Universal Media, OMD and Magna. PROCTER & GAMBLE, one of the top global companies continues to be the number one spender in the Pan-arab market for many years. What is clear, is that changes need to be instituted in 2017 within the advertising industry in order to overcome the crisis and in turn, achieve better results.