Targeted advertising the next big thing for Mideast digital media
Posted on 02 July 2010 with no comments from readers
Middle East marketeers are starting to embrace social networking on the Internet to reach a younger audience, and seminars on this new media are presently packed out.
But this is only a part of the next generation of the digital media. Big portal websites are going to be history. Focused websites are where the market is going next. That is why we launched ArabianMoney.net as the region’s first dedicated financial comment website. Only Google has spotted our advertising potential thus far. Sponsorship of this media would actually work far better.
Digital future
Last week the International Advertisers Association hosted a seminar on new digital media. Director of Emerging Technologies at Publicis Groupe Media, Rami Sa’ad explained: ‘The path to purchase no longer involves advertising to one million people and then hoping that 100 of them are interested in your product.
‘It’s a matter of addressing those 100 people with concentration and making sure that you are open to feedback and hear what people have to say.’
He also highlighted the obvious importance of having a basic website for every company so that clients can find you. But he then made the observation: ‘Why research 2,000 people when you can get in touch with people who are actually buying your brand? Aren’t they the most important people?’
The same argument supports advertising or sponsorship on a focused website rather than a general information portal. On one media the reader is likely to be interested in a particular type of product, on the other you are wasting your message on most who see it.
Digital eyeballs
Advertisers have followed eyeballs to the Internet and mobile phones with web access. Now they have to position their advertising dollars in the right niches. It is very easy to blast messages across the web, even using Google, and not strike gold in a million page views.
By contrast get to the right 50 or so investors in the Middle East and you might be able to raise millions in finance for a project, or find enough high net worth customers for a new financial product like a platinum credit card.
Drilling down in content is what the next generation of digital media is so good at, and effective advertising on the Net now means doing the same thing.
