CAIRO: Despite the slow turn toward online marketing and advertising in the Middle East, and especially North Africa, MediaME.com is to publish the region's first digital marketing communications directory this year in an effort to spur growth in the digital sector. The company already has a basic online version available, and is a leading user-generated online community for advertising and media professionals, will publish as early as March the “Who's Who in Digital Media Middle East 2012” and will feature profiles of the region's digital media leaders. It will give an opportunity for those businesses who have not gotten on board the digital wave to read about digital marketing, design, content and other services in the directory. MediaME.com's parent company MediaScope has already been publishing a “Who's Who in Jordan's Advertising & Media” and “Who's Who in Jordan's ICT,” but now wants to take the model regionwide. “The guide will offer a unique company profile format including corporate profile text, company logo, key staff photos, major clients and contacts; and therefore provides a comprehensive and accessible information package on the leading companies operating in the field,” the company said. In Egypt, there abounds much optimism surrounding the publishing, as digital advertising remains quite stagnant and almost non-existent in many of the English language online publications. “What we are facing right now is a struggle between traditional media outlets and the online world where everything seems to be heading,” marketing specialist and longtime Egyptian resident Sean Uunder told Bikyamasr.com. He has consulted with a number of leading Egyptian tourism sites in recent years, and has attempted to develop the concept of online marketing, but the Swede argued it is an uphill battle. “The executives at these companies still find it hard to grasp that going online is often cheaper and can deliver more views of their advertisement. We will figure out the issues soon, but a directory like this can really help to get businesses to visualize the importance of online advertising in the near future,” he added. The new directory hopes to create a new positioning of the digital media world, especially in North Africa, where three successive revolutions toppled longtime dictators, in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya respectively. While many experts argue it was the online world that enabled it to happen, the reality is that traditional means were more likely. Egyptians largely used word of mouth, not social-networking sites, to bring out hundreds of thousands of people to streets to protest. Then, Uunder said, they took to the online world and told their stories. “This is key, and something that this new directory can help bridge, the idea that there really is a double world in the North Africa region where people prefer, or trust, traditional information distribution, so a directory like this will give those who prefer traditional a traditional way of seeing how the future is likely to work,” he added. With Egypt and Tunisia looking to open up bidding on new mobile operators some time this year, the digital age for North Africa appears to have arrived and through efforts like MediaME.com, bridging that gap between the online world and the traditional could be key to rebooting the economies. “Companies will definitely prefer this publishing method first, and we will see what kind of impact it has in places like Egypt and Tunisia, where both economies are somewhat slow,” Uunder added. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/MHAB4 Tags: Digital, Marketing, Media, MediaME Section: Latest News, Tech
