Posts filed under 'Research'
If you’re tired of seeing this image by now- so are we- stop for a moment to consider the marketing implications of the famous World Cup final headbutt, which apparently continues to provide Adidas with millions of brand exposures.
Zidane is wearing Adidas kit, with the logo appearing on his shirt, shorts and socks.
Apart from having it’s logo on the match ball, on billboards in the stadium and on every French player’s apparel; the head butt will provide the ‘long-term’ branding effect.
Apparently, research firm Nielsen believes this has resulted in Adidas winning the ‘World Cup 2006 Brand War’.
And the exposure continues on the Internet everyday, with tens of thousands of daily playbacks on video sharing sites like YouTube and MetaCafe.
Ridiculous?
Maybe, but it’s described in detail at The MediaPost.
July 24th, 2006

The war raging between Lebanon and Israel is causing a massive jump in the traffic of Arabic news sites, with the biggest impact reported by Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera.net claims to have registered 6 million ‘visits’ yesterday, and leaping in rankings from 190 to 113.
It’s not clear were they got the ranking data from, but if you run a check on Alexa, you’ll get the following results: Today’s rank is 127, this week’s average rank is 146 and the 3 months average is 290. So, it’s quite an impressive leap.
These numbers, if validated, would make AlJazeera.net the top Arab site in terms of traffic. At least, for the duration of this conflict.
Here’s the announcement (in Arabic). Al Jazeera is headquartered in Qatar.
July 19th, 2006

It seems that online media auditing is gathering pace in the region, as Zawya.com announces the results of an ABC Electronic Media Audit.
The audit, carried out in May 2006, shows that Zawya has 212,853 unique users, with total page impressions of 3,488,783.
Zawya was already considered among the top regional portals, but it’s interesting to note that 80% of the content of the site is ‘locked’ and only available to paying subscribers.
So, you would assume Zawya has a massive number of paying users, which also explains the high number of page views per user: 15 pages.
If user’s are paying for the service, they’ll want to get their money’s worth!
This information is of importance to advertisers, as is the profiling of the users.
Read more at Strategiy.com.
Surely, now we’ll be seeing more online audience audits in the region, whether through ABC or BPI, for leading regional portals.
July 17th, 2006

It was heralded as the future of advertising on the Internet, and now pulls in billions of dollars annually for Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.
Yet, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising suffers from a major flaw….. anyone can click and advertisers must pay up.
The result, is hundreds of millions of dollars lost on click fraud every year - clicks not generated by interested customers, but by vandals who wish to drain an advertiser’s PPC campaign.
The undesirable effect is advertisers losing faith in PPC advertising, bringing this relatively new industry to a grinding halt before it even matures!
That’s what a study by Outsell reveals. The total impact to advertisers is $1.3 billion (the $800 million wasted on fraudulent clicks, plus $500 million no longer spent on PPC).
Big numbers. Big problem. Read more here at AdAge.
And here are the key findings of this study:
27% of advertisers have already slowed or stopped their pay-per-click advertising. The average spending reduction is 33% of total PPC spending. Another 10% of advertisers have plans to cut their PPC spending budgets.
On average, advertisers estimate that 14.6% of the clicks they’re billed for are fraudulent, representing about $800 million in spending for fraudulent clicks in 2005.
Technorati Tags: Click Fraud, PPC, Online Advertising
July 7th, 2006
MBC conducted a poll in Kuwait during March and April 2006.
Having analyzed the data, the survey reveals that MBC2 - the film channel- generates an outstanding 225 gross rating points (GPR) amongst adult viewers, while its closest competitor generated only 135 rating points (GPR).
Of all the English and Arabic television stations in Kuwait, MBC2 was the highest viewed channel on TV. That’s quite an achievement
MBC2 success, in Kuwait and other GCC countries, show that there’s growing demand for western Hollywood blockbusters.
The fact it’s free-to-air, oppossed to the region’s subscription movie channels on Showtime and Orbit, has shaken up the pay TV market. But that’s a bigger topic, which needs to be tackled in seperate studies!
So, if you live in Kuwait, is MBC2 indeed your favourite channel?
July 6th, 2006
It's official, advertising expenditures in the UAE have now dropped again. A couple of months ago, we reported a drop in advertising expenditures in the UAE during the first quarter of 2006. Well, now it's a quarter-on-quarter trend, as expenditures slide in the second quarter of 2006, causing a total loss of 6% in advertising spend compared to the first half of last year. Advertising spending has dropped to $498m for the first six, from $529m last year. According to Ipsos, the decline is due to several magazines ceasing publication and the move by some local TV companies to pan Arabian satellite. However, others are of the opinion that a growth in direct marketing and sponsorship spend is the reason. Read more details in the Gulf News.
July 4th, 2006
Online real estate advertising is growing in the United States to take a considerable slice of the total advertising of that sector.
Apparently, it is estimated that it will be $1.719 billion this year, marking around 15 percent of the projected $11.698 billion total real estate spending, according to a new report by Borrell Associates.
And the online portion is set to grow further, to around 32% of total budgets. This will be, for the most part, at the expense of real estate advertising in newspapers.
If it’s an online trend in the United States, then maybe it’s already started in the Middle East.
Already, in our region, major real estate and special economic zone campaigns are using online media, led by EMAAR, Qatar Financial City, Dubai Holding and others.
Even through text link advertising (Google AdSense especially), you will note that companies are offering real estate for rent in the Middle East.
Anyway, read more at MediaPost.
July 1st, 2006
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