A recent survey found that companies in the Middle East prefer traditional marketing to online promotion.
The study, done by Egypt-based T4S Group’s Internet Shopper magazine, was based on 20 companies that have regional offices in one or more Middle East countries, as well as prominent Web sites. The study found that the companies surveyed believe that online marketing will not reach the potential market they want to target.
The firms prefer marketing based on print ads into magazines and
massive newsletters, rather than putting their ads on the Net,
even though online ads prices in the Middle East are still very low
compared to those in USA and Europe (varies between US $300 to $1000 per
month for most of the sites).
Ninety-eight percent of the companies studied said they haven’t started purchasing ad
space on other sites, with 57 percent saying they don’t expect to change within the next nine months. Sixty-seven percent said they will only swap banners between their site and the other sites.
The study found that companies expect not to have a good feedback for online ads due to the few number of users in the region compared to the population.
One of the companies replied that when publishing an ad in a famous newspaper like Al Ahram, which costs them $5000, they guarantee the ad will reach over than two million readers. Most of those readers don’t have Internet access, the company said.