November 19th, 2008 elitani
Memac Ogilvy has recently announced the introduction of the world renowned Ogilvy Digital Training Programme to the Middle East. Hosted by Patou Nuyteman, Digital Director for EAME Ogilvy, the course is designed to equip consultants with deeper knowledge and the latest relevant experience for the rapidly-evolving digital space.
Eddie Moutran, Chairman and CEO, Memac Ogilvy, said:
‘There is so much changing in our digital lives -personal media is growing, search is changing the way we find things, technology makes publishing easy - brands and organisations must communicate differently to participate. Our clients are seeking strong, practical counsel, strategy and action in the rapidly-evolving digital space and by participating in this effective training we will continue to keep our clients at the forefront of their industries.’
The two-day Digital Training Programme will aim to clarify the digital channels and websites that are most effective at reaching target audiences and equip Memac Ogilvy’s senior leaders with the skills to understand the evolving digital media landscape and how this affects communication. Participants will leave the workshop with a new understanding of the implications of digital and be able to apply their expertise.
The course will be conducted by veteran Ogilvy staff member Patou Nuyteman, who has over 13 years experience with Ogilvy in Brussels, Paris, NY, London and Cape Town, it will be only the third time this training has been run globally. Passionate about new media, Nuyteman continues to enthuse Ogilvy colleagues and clients on how media fragmentation and technology have given consumers more choice and more control, obliging marketers to rethink how they will reach their audiences effectively. She is a popular speaker at conferences with her ‘Welcome to the All-Ways on Consumer’ speech.
‘Coupling Memac Ogilvy’s growth from last year and the robust expansion in 2008, a strong, experienced management team is vital to ensure we continue to provide the same level of dedication to grow our clients’ brands using direct and digital communication. The Digital Training Programme underscores our commitment to do that and beyond. It’s another proof point in our plans to become a regional center of excellence,’ said Moutran.
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October 30th, 2008 elitani
The Saudi Telecommunications Authority has blocked access to the Voice of Saudi Women website (www.saudiwomen.net) for opposing government policy. Reporters Without Borders has joined the Saudi Human Rights Commission and the Saudi Human Rights Association, as well as the website’s members and visitors, in condemning the measure. The Voice of Saudi Women site has a number of analytical reports about the status of women in Saudi society. It monitors legislative changes and denounces impediments to women becoming effective actors in Saudi society, according to RWB.
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October 20th, 2008 elitani
Google is vowing to introduce more Arabic products to the market as it looks for ways to enrich the internet experience of web users in the Middle East.
The search engine giant, which is exhibiting at GITEX Technology Week for the first time, intends to strengthen its regional offering in line with the investments it is making in local staff and infrastructure.
“We are working on parallel opportunities and the result will be even more Arabic products in the near future,” promises Yasmina Brihi, regional marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa at Google.
We already have 15 products available in Arabic so we have made great progress and there is a lot of emphasis on that. But we’re not only working towards localising products, we’re developing new products and features as well.”
As more of the Arab world comes online, Brihi expects a sharp acceleration in the adoption of Google products and tools in the region.
Visitors to Google’s stand in the DIC Pavilion are invited to get the lowdown on the company’s portfolio, including the services it now provides in Arabic. Its Knol, Gmail and iGoogle tools have all been developed in Arabic, as has Chrome, its latest web browser. The company also has representatives on hand to explain how its search advertising and enterprise applications offerings can support Middle East businesses.
“The way we do business is always to start with the users,” explains Brihi. “All of our innovation comes from looking at what the user wants and giving them what they need to empower them for a more interesting life on the web.”
Google’s appearance at GITEX represents a milestone for its Middle East operations, which continue to expand in size. “We have been ramping up over the last two years by investing on several fronts. In terms of physical presence, we now have offices in three of our key markets - Egypt, KSA and the UAE. We have also invested heavily in terms of products with the Arabic market in mind,” insists Brihi.
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October 18th, 2008 elitani
By Cathal O’Toole on Thursday, October 16, 2008
The global mobile advertising market will, according to some industry sources, be worth over $18.5 billion by 2010. Not only will it offer operators a new revenue stream that has, as yet, not been fully ascertained by them, it also offers the media industry one of the most exciting means of mass-audience targeting and message delivery in the history of advertising.
Mobile advertising is still evolving, with multimedia content and latest 3G-and-beyond network capabilities creating major opportunities for high-speed service and advertising delivery. TV, for example, already one of society’s major advertising vehicles, is now reaching the mobile and mobile TV advertising is a forgone conclusion. Funding future mobile content is likely to rely on a degree of mobile advertising with brands gathering to support and sponsor the most popular content received by subscribers.
In the Middle East and Africa, where both saturated and developing mobile markets exist, what is apparent is that each of these market profiles will gain from mobile advertising in different ways.
In saturated markets, the primary concern of the senior management of mobile operators is where further growth will come from. With their shareholders demanding further returns but with subscriber numbers and ARPUs level, at best remaining static, operators must pursue alternative revenue streams. Advertising is a very compelling, alternative revenue choice that can augment the traditional product lines of messaging and minutes.
In the region’s developing markets, the main issues are often the low ARPU per customer and the difficulty in expanding profitable product usage in environments where per-capita incomes are low. Mobile operators have multiple customer touchpoints and mobile advertising allows them to bring a second payer to the market. Now, instead of each minute or text just being paid for by the mobile subscriber, the costs can be part-subsidised by the advertiser in return for the placement of advertisements on the subscriber’s traffic. In addition, operators can place advertising within traditionally non-revenue-generating traffic like missed call notifications. In this way, traffic growth can be part-funded by the advertising industry in return for gaining access to a brand new channel through which to communicate with consumers. In situations where the choice between feeding your family, or using your mobile phone is very real, the potential advantages, to the operator of introducing mobile advertising are considerable.
However, it is vital that any advertising campaign takes into consideration the appropriate advertising mechanism to deliver the message to the target consumer segment. In markets where the handsets are low-end and are unlikely to be used for anything other than calls, texts and alarm calls, the right advertising medium is text based. Where browsing is more commonplace, or where subscribers are more used to multi-media, then MMS or browsing-based advertising makes sense.
One important factor in the early stages of this new business model for advertisement delivery is that strategic partnerships between key mobile industry players and the media / advertising industry will be crucial. The principal point here is that in order to successfully build an advertising business – and indeed to make it a success in any operator’s environment – the operator must work with a solution provider that is partnered with a market-leading media agency. Without this level of partnership and without the expertise that both the media agency and the solution vendor bring to the table, it will be very difficult to deliver successful campaigns.
Addressing Prepaid Users
In Africa and the Middle East mobile advertising presents an ideal opportunity for prepaid users to receive the latest mobile services, until now priced beyond their reach, but now potentially at a much lower cost because the services can be funded by advertisers and the operators. MMS, WAP and VAS, like mobile downloads, can all now be made affordable to the typical prepaid user.
In these markets operators are very proactive building subscriber communities, which offer users products and services like IM (equivalent to Google Talk, Yahoo IM etc). For example, Zain is appending its own brand adverts on instant messages so reaching its own subscribers across 20 networks, or with local messages within a single country or even urban region.
Other operators like Wataniya, Etisalat and the MTN Group are building subscriber communities to offer more services like VAS and roaming at lower rates, which will only be possible when linked with mobile advertising. This applies particularly to the huge prepaid segment.
Mobile advertising is also a way of reaching those members in a population with low literacy levels. Although they have a mobile, these people would otherwise not see daily newspapers and other advertising media other than outdoor advertising, which is widespread through the MEA region.
Mobile Advertising Delivery
Methods of mobile advertising can be categorised three ways: advertising over messaging, advertising during browsing sessions, or advertising that employs media or VAS applications.
Advertising over messaging is where advertisements are sent using SMS, MMS, Instant Messaging, or other messaging media. The advertising engine will recognise and append the message appropriately with a targeted advert for the receiving subscriber. Selection of the advertisement is based on user profile criteria, time and date, type of message and in the case of Peer to Peer messages , keywords in the original message body. Once the advert is inserted into the SMS/MMS by the Ad Engine, it is then sent back to the SMSC (or MMSC), to complete message delivery.
Advertising during mobile Internet browsing sessions, offers an experience similar to advertising on the Internet. With a surge in the number of mobile Internet sites available to advertisers, typically as companion sites to traditional web pages, together with a more sophisticated mobile subscriber base, display-type ads on such mobile sites are a more viable option for advertisers. Mobile Internet ads consist of text, graphics, or both, and offer the audience a number of response options, such as a simple click-through, which may reach a product registration page, or a click-to-call option to a call centre, or a click-to-buy option with a purchase appearing on the user’s mobile phone bill.
Media and VAS-related advertising and handset/content-related advertising is the final category. Here an advert is inserted into a service experience such as: Ringback Tones or Interactive Voice Response (IVR), on mobile TV or using idle screen time on a mobile device. For example, an IVR message may promote a brand by telling the caller, “before entering your PIN to retrieve you messages did you know that ‘Brand Name’ is on offer…?” Though similar to messaging-domain advertising an ad in this case is received via an application such as Ringback Tone service or Voice Messaging from outside the network provided by a third party content provider.
Future Imperatives
For mobile advertising to gain effective momentum and reach its optimum potential as quickly as possible, there is an absolute imperative for the industry to work together. Advertisers / agencies need to work with mobile operators and vendors to build a supply chain that can deliver good quality advertising, and can report on this in ways that are useful for all parties.
This new media space is a very complex development, unlike that of, say, broadcast media, so platforms implemented by operators need to adhere to commonly-agreed guidelines – and it’s not just the platforms, it’s about the reporting / planning / campaigning – effectively, the design of the whole mobile advertising eco-system that requires agreement and co-operation, now.
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October 6th, 2008 elitani
By Vineetha Menon
The United Arab Emirates has been identified as one of the countries that extensively filters content online in a global survey by the OpenNet Initiative.
The UAE not only blocks content that is religiously, culturally and socially inappropriate, but also filters political content. The report pointed out that internet users in the country were also prevented from legitimately using privacy and anonymizing tools and online translation services as they could be used to bypass filtering systems.
The software SmartFilter, from the US-based firm Secure Computing, is used to filter content from specified categories outside the free zones in the UAE.
According to the report, the UAE does not just “…extensively block targeted content but they also unnecessarily overblock unrelated content. For instance, Iran and the United Arab Emirates block flickr.com entirely because they have deemed some of the photographs posted on the site objectionable.”
The country was given a rank of ‘low’ for its consistency in filtering content.
Based on the global survey, 25 out of 40 countries were found to prohibit access to certain content online. 11 out of those 25 countries are from the Middle East and North Africa region - Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen.
Interestingly, broadband internet access is growing faster in the MEA region than any other region in the world.
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