A report released by the Pan Arab Researches Center (PARC) confirmed that the advertisement expenditure in the Arab World rose 10 percent last year to reach 2.276 billion dollars.
The Kuwaiti News Agency cited PARC- Kuwait manager, Khaled Shahoury, as saying that the GCC countries’ share in the expenditure was 40 percent, while the share of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Yemen was 31.1 percent. The Pan-Arab media share was 28 percent.
Shahoury pointed out that newspapers continued to observe the biggest ratio of advertisement in the region at 41 percent, followed by the TV stations at 39 percent, magazines at 14 percent, Radio stations at three percent and street and road advertisements at three percent.
The Kuwaiti News Agency said that the annual report released by PARC included advertisement media in the 6 GCC countries, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen in addition to the Asian advertisement media covering the area and the satellite channels.
Advertisements in the satellite channels ranked first amounting to 639 million dollars followed by Egypt at 407 million dollars, Saudi Arabia at 377 millions, Lebanon at 241 millions, UAE at 214 millions while Kuwait ranked sixth at 199 million dollars.
Shahoury said that Kuwait witnessed a marked rise of 15 percent in advertisement expenditure in 2000 amounting to 199 million dollars versus 174 million dollars in 1999.
The report explained that newspapers as usual had the biggest share of the advertisement expenditure in Kuwait at 67 percent followed by magazines at 17 percent and street and road advertisements at 8 percent, while the share of the audiovisual media did not exceed 8 percent.
The services sector in the Arab World had the biggest share of the advertisement expenditure at 49 percent, followed by clothes and personal accessories at 15 percent, cars and spare parts at 12 percent and foodstuff at 8 percent.
Shahoury pointed out that the Kuwait national companies, unlike other Arab companies, spent more than international companies in Kuwait on advertisement, which put Kuwait at the top of the list of Arab countries in which the national establishments play an important role in advertisement expenditure.
“Grass Awareness Project” which deals with the harmful impacts of drugs ranked first with regard to expenditure on advertisement campaigns, followed by Telecommunications company, National Communication company, Al Ghanem company, Kuwait National Bank and the Kuwaiti Financing House,” Shahoury added.
The report also indicated that the total expenditure of the GCC countries on advertisement reached 912.5 million dollars with Saudi Arabia spending 377 million dollars, followed by UAE at 241, Kuwait 199, Bahrain 57, Qatar 50 and Oman 29 million dollars.
All the GCC countries except Qatar spent between 6 to 46 percent more on advertisement last year.
Commenting on the advertisement expenditure of the Arab World as a whole, Shahoury said that the report revealed a number of important facts about the Arab World economy. The most important of all, is the small expenditure of the local or national companies on advertisement in the Arab countries.
Shahoury continued saying that a list of the biggest advertisers in the Arab countries included only two Egyptian local companies, while the rest of the companies on the list were international companies.
“The fact that foreign international companies lead the advertisement market in the Arab World needs to be studied because this raises many questions regarding the future of the advertisement market in the area in light of the foreign factors controlling it”, Shahoury said.
He added that it is illogical for the Arab local companies to absent themselves from the advertising market in this manner. This exposes the market to the risks that result from possible foreign companies’ withdrawal from it or decreasing their expenditure in this field.
Shahoury called on the companies and national corporations in all Arab countries to raise the average of their expenditure on advertisement in order to guarantee the stability of this market and at the same time activate the Arab economy as a whole. He indicated that the issue is more than just advertisements published in a newspaper or aired by a TV channel.
PARC manager said that the issue is ultimately an economic cycle from which the advertisers benefit through increasing the volume of their sales. The advertisement corporations improve their services, and the advertisement agencies provide more jobs. Consumers benefit from getting more information on the products and services offered to them.
PARC’s report said that the services sector witnessed the largest advertisement expenditure in the Arab media with 39 percent, followed by the food sector at 15 percent, and the clothes and personal accessories at 13 percent.
Car companies in the Arab World contributed most to the advertisement expenditure. This is due to the fact that six international car-producing companies are among the top 20 companies in expenditure on advertisement in the region. The top- 10 advertising companies in the Arab World included Toyota, Pepsi Cola, Hyundai, Chevrolet, Misr Phone Mobile Telephone company, GMC, Coca Cola, Nissan, Head and Shoulders and Pert Plus.
Regarding Pan Arab Media, Park-Kuwait manager said that advertisement expenditure has recently risen in these media, which is a normal phenomenon due to the widespread viewing of satellite channels which can be found in almost every house in this region. Shahoury added that advertisement expenditure in these media reached 638.7 million dollars in 2000 with an increase of 20 percent over 1999.
Satellite channels share amounted to 78 percent followed by newspapers and magazines at 20 percent and radio stations at 3 percent -- Albawaba.com
