Online ad spending by du to double

The telecommunications operator du plans to double the proportion of advertising it places on the web over the next two years.

Osman Sultan, the company's chief executive, says du aims to devote more than 14 per cent of its advertising budget to online media by 2013.

"Digital media in 2010 represented a bit more than 7 per cent of our spending. I'm expecting this to double in the next two years," Mr Sultan said.

He was speaking at a debate at this week's Dubai International Advertising Festival, appearing on a panel alongside Mohamed Fawzi, the marketing director at BMW Middle East.

BMW was "spending around 10 per cent" of its total Middle East advertising budget on digital media, Mr Fawzi said.

The general level of digital advertising spending in the Middle East was behind that of the developed world, he said.

"We are definitely behind the developed world. The main reason is the absence or the low quality of the CRM [customer relationship management] and sales management systems here," said Mr Fawzi.

Online advertising has been relatively slow to take off in the Arab world, with spending in some markets accounting for just 1 to 2 per cent of total ad spending.

But the industry is growing, with some experts saying that spending will increase to almost US$200 million (Dh734.5m) in the GCC and the Levant this year.

Raja Trad, the chief executive at Leo Burnett in the Mena region, agreed the trend was towards growth in spending on digital media.

"There are some technical barriers that [are] not supporting the growth of digital," Mr Trad said. "But in my opinion, unless you live it today you're going to miss the train."

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