Among the attendees were marketeers, brand builders and advertisers from renowned local and multinational organizations. The event was one of several networking events organized by the ABG throughout the year to raise awareness of the work of the association and enable members to learn more on key marketing and media issues. The strong turnout was a clear reflection of the region’s growth and critical importance of digital media and marketing.

The guests were welcomed by Sara Sahely, Vice Chair of the ABG , who introduced the members of ABG’s  recently established Online Media Measurement Task Force, led by Inger Hedin. The committee comprises representation from major multinational advertisers and has been established to evaluate the internet research in the GCC (and MENA) region.

Sara Sahely  introduced the evening’s  guest speaker, Ahmed Nassef, Vice President of the Maktoob Group and General Manager of Maktoob.com, the Arab world’s leading web portal and online community, who gave an insightful presentation on  ’Digital Marketing in the Arab World’.  He highlighted the fact that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has the  fastest rate of internet user growth in the world and touched on the challenges of marketing to a  Pan Arab audience.  Some markets in the Gulf, such as the UAE, already have high internet penetration.

Ahmed went on to discuss  online media trends, such as discussion forums.  He stressed that internet usage in the region had reached a “tipping point” and that it was time for advertisers to follow the audience  and invest more in online advertising. Only 1% of ad spending in the GCC/Levant is currently  invested in the internet, although it is growing faster than other media. Digital technologies lend themselves to precise auditing and measurement like no other media platform and the region also has to catch up with other parts of the world in terms of online audience measurement.  This will help to grow confidence.  

Ahmed finished by discussing the merger between Yahoo! And Maktoob and what it would mean for users  and advertisers in the region. Benefits would include Yahoo! media products in Arabic, customized for the Arab world, massive combined reach, targeting technologies to improve ROI and investment in industry best practices, transparency and measurement.

“Increased internet penetration will drive online ad spend” stressed Inger Hedin following the presentation. “This medium is measurable, which means that the advertisers  know exactly what they  are getting for their investment.  The presentation by Ahmed Nasser, and the following discussion, showed an increased interest in the internet as a medium in this region”, she added.

“Look at what has happened here. Chinese banners were covered and people talked a lot about how to make the Internet more inclusive, but in the end, no matter what happens, there will never be the complete mobility the Internet offers until companies start ensuring the freedom of their content to get to the user. In China this doesn’t happen and even here in Egypt, where I have lived previously, you simply cannot access all the websites you want,” the Chinese analyst told Bikya Masr.

Of course, those posters the UN asked to be removed were not from the Chinese government, instead they were advertising a “Free Tibet” film. China complained, Chio says, and since the Asian giant is the most promising arena for Internet companies and business, the banners were removed, which left a sour taste in many observers.

“It is ridiculous that we come for a conference on the freedom of the Internet and censorship happens on the first day,” added Chio.

Making matters interesting, Egypt announced it would apply for the first Internet domain in Arabic in an effort to boost online access in emerging markets, such as North Africa and the Middle East.

The new domain will be “.masr”, or literally “.egypt” in Arabic. Differentiating it from other domains is that it will be written using the Arabic alphabet, not the typical Latin letters of the “.com.” If successful, Egypt will be the first Arabic speaking nation to achieve an all Arabic Internet. Minister Tarek Kamel said that the initiative is part of the country’s push toward broadening access to Arabic speakers. He said that the vast majority of Egyptians, and many Arabs in general, are unable to use the Internet without Arabic access.

Kamel added that by registering it “will offer new avenues for innovation, investment and growth, and hence we can truly and gladly say the Internet now speaks Arabic.

“It is a great moment for us,” Kamel said of the domain opportunity.

However, despite the efforts, a number of analysts and observers are not sold on the idea. While they say it will certainly increase Arabic generated content, it will do little to curb the rising censorship that has left the region fraught with uncertainty.

“What we have to see is how much government will be into this project. If it is just their initiative and then will open it up to private users and their websites, then it will be great, but if it tries to keep control of the content it will be a government instrument to censor and trap users,” said Ayman el-Din Said, a European-based web technician.

“We have to watch and see. It is a good idea initially and when we look at it, it really could bring in millions of users who haven’t felt comfortable as of yet to use the Net. It will give many more jobs to the region,” he added.

The Middle East and North Africa is a top priority of Internet companies, including Yahoo, which purchased Maktoob.com, an Arab online community website earlier this fall. Yang told the conference there are over 300 million Arabic speakers across the globe, but only one percent of online content is in the language. He added that Yahoo plans to bring its mail and messenger services to the Arabic speaking world next year, but did not say when exactly that would occur.

Either way, the Internet in the region is still in its infancy. Less than half of all Egyptians use the Internet on a regular basis. The market remains wide open and companies like Yahoo have seen this, analysts argue.

“They know the importance of the Internet for the region and the fact that there is a long way to go, so it only makes sense to have an all Arabic domain. Whoever gets on this now, will make a lot of money,” said Mohamed al-Anany, who works at an Egyptian-based Internet company. “It might be too early to tell really what is going to happen, but it is exciting.”

We’re hearing some pretty amazing statistics about Twitter these days: growth from February 2008 to February 2009 was reportedly 1382%, with the incline increasing yet further in recent months.

But like many social networks, it seems many people lose steam with the service. Stat tracking firm Nielsen reports today that a full 60% of users who sign up fail to return the following month. And in the 12 months “pre-Oprah”, retention rates were even lower: only 30% returned the next month. That’s good news, to some degree: retention rates have increased over time.

But how does Twitter’s() retention rate compare to Facebook() and MySpace() in the early days? Not well, says Nielsen:

Compare it to the two heavily-touted behemoths of social networking when they were just starting out…we found that even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.

The question is, how can Twitter make sure that users stick around for the long haul? What is it about Facebook and MySpace that make them so appealing? Could it be, possibly, that finding friends on Twitter remains harder than doing so on other social networks?