As things get tough for ad revenue in Dubai it was heartening recently to do a tour of the top 5 agencies in Dubai to assess this quarters potential revnue. To be fair this was done a couple of weeks ago and therefore before Dubai began to accept that it is 100% in the global meltdown now.
Each of the five said that as we dont pay AVR we wont be used at all as they need to hit the next level of thie AVR target to get the incsreased kick back as ad spend is going to be tought to find certainly based on current trading conditions.
Upon reaching for one of our inside pockets (for a pen), one of them almost leapt out of his skin asking if we were recording the conversation....having just held his hands above his head rubbing thumb, fore and middle fingers together saying 'this is what its about, you know what this is...?' classy.
Anyway having personally had about $250,000 of cancellations in the last 4 weeks our targets wont be hit anyway which is heartening as mine have just been raised 28% mid way through the targeted period by management....which is pleasant...and that from one of the very very few 'decent' media owners here.
Great....

lack of transparency

media in the middle east is obviously corrupt.

the media owners wont audit their media and when they do its pretty much always free users. media agencies avoid measurement as they cant justify their plans. both sides are on the take and they arent taking due to quality media, they are taking because they lie. why do they lie, because theyre hiding the truth and lining their pockets.....

avr is the raison d'etre of the agencies. and the media owners pay it and do deals all over the place.

without transparent media measurement the media will not evolve as is seen by the general poor quality and lack of online offerings.

if you dont pay avr the agencies rarely use you. do the big guys who run the global networks know this and turn a blind eye?

the lack of freedom of speach in the media does not affect the lack of measurement on spend.

its not good for the consumers at the end of the day nor honest hardworkers. who is to blame, the media agencies or the media owners? are the marketeers also to blame other than simply lack of ability? can nielsen etc do anything about it? will we ever get an ebrs, ems, tgi or nrs style industry standard and can you effect this from the bottom up or does it have to come from the top?