Less than 1% of online content is in Arabic although there are more than 344 million Arabic speakers worldwide and it is the seventh-most popular language on the Web, His Excellency Saeed Al-Hajeri, Board member and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Abu Dhabi Media stated in his opening speech to delegates at the Abu Dhabi […]
Less than 1% of online content is in Arabic although there are more than 344 million Arabic speakers worldwide and it is the seventh-most popular language on the Web, His Excellency Saeed Al-Hajeri, Board member and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Abu Dhabi Media stated in his opening speech to delegates at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.
The Summit, which is being held at Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, from March 15-17 , builds on the key themes of last years inaugural edition, which focused on the evolution of media platforms.
As an ex- Disney director said: Get the content right and all platforms will be your friend, Al Hajeri pointed out.
We want the dialogue at this years Abu Dhabi Media Summit to be about the very thing that drives people to buy and invest in the latest platforms Great Content.
In the last two years, Abu Dhabi has established itself as a global media hub by investing in various ventures and media businesses such as its content generation arm; Imagenation, the production arm of Abu Dhabi Media Company; and the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. The UAE capital has taken aggressive steps over the last two years to help create high-quality Arabic content and develop local talent, and actively engaged with international media players to bring their expertise to the Arab market.
Al Hajeri also listed statistics that indicated that the Middle East media would experience an unprecedented boom in the coming years.
“Following the recession, the media sector is on a strong recovery path already. In this region, overall advertising spend is expected to grow at a rate of around 8%, compared to 3% in the US and 1% in the UK.
“The development of new media is also of great importance here. During the recession, while the TV advertising spend reduced, the online ad spend grew by 39% to reach 128 million dollars.
“This region is also home to the fastest-growing telecom market in the world, with mobile broadband use expected to grow at 56% between 2010 and 2012.
“Smartphone penetration is already much higher than other emerging markets and is continually growing.
He added that online media consumption and advertising especially would see a huge growth as the region has a huge population of youth.
“More than 30% of our population is between the ages of 15 and 29, so its youth that are defining media consumption and habits. And they are doing it mainly on Facebook. Research published last year showed that the GCC already had 5 million active users of Facebook,” he added.
Al-Hajeris speech was followed by a conversation between Avatar director James Cameron and James Murdoch, chairman & CEO Europe & Asia of News Corporation on Content Creation, technology versus story, producing content in 3D and the environment.
