PAN ARAB
The Pan Arab market, the biggest market in the MENA region, witnessed a drastic drop of 22% on the total advertising expenditures on traditional media. These figures reflect the fact that 2017 was another difficult year with all the changes happening in the region and all the budget cuts across all sectors. The print industry as expected is continuing to drop with 21% decrease in magazines and 52% in newspapers. The budget lost this year in the print expenditures is a total of 33 million USD, which is kind of expected due to the noticeable shift to online media. TV on the other hand, the most important medium in the Pan Arab market, has witnessed a drop of 22%, a 1.56 billion USD budget has been lost this year due to economic issues and political changes in the GCC countries. The top brand in 2017 in terms of expenditures is Trivago, which earned a way into the top four brands and changed the positioning of the first two brands in 2016 to move them into 2nd and 3rd position. Saudi Telecom ranked 2nd followed by SEDAR. Dettol remained in 4th place, the same as in 2016. As for the number one media agency based on advertising expenditures, Starcom Mediavest group kept its position as number one, followed by Magna, Universal Media, and OMD. Unilever acquired the first position from Procter & Gamble in 2017, which was the number one spender in the Pan Arab market for many previous years. 2017 was a tough year for the advertising industry in the MENA region. Let’s hope that 2018 will witness a revolution in the industry.