Middle East advertising expenditure is expected to grow 4.8 per cent this year, despite a sharp decline over the last two years, said a report.

Adspend shrank 14.9 per cent in 2011 and grew a meagre 1.4 per cent last year, following the region’s social and political turmoil, said the Advertising Expenditure Forecasts September 2013 by Zenith Optimedia, an ROI agency.

The firm has forecast a 7.3 per cent growth in 2014 and 8.8 per cent in 2015.

After the recent violence in Egypt, the forecast for the country has been reduced from 3.9 per cent growth to 6.3 per cent decline.

Global adspend is expected to grow 3.5 per cent to reach $503 billion by the end of the year, said the report.

The internet remains the fastest growing advertising medium globally, having grown 16.4 per cent in 2012, and an average of 16 per cent annual growth forecast for 2013 to 2015.

It also pointed out that stronger adspend growth is expected over the next two year - 5.1 per cent  in 2014 and 5.9 per cent in 2015.

There has been no sign of a concerted advertising slowdown in rising markets, despite concerns over their short-term economic prospects. Economic growth has slowed in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as demand for their exports have weakened and international investors have begun to turn their attention to mature markets.

Advertisers, however, have not been put off by the recent problems and are investing for the long term. The adspend is expected to grow 7.6 per cent this year in rising markets, it said.

Despite the rapid growth of the rising markets, the US is still the biggest contributor of new ad dollars to the global market. Between 2012 and 2015, the expected US contribution is 28 per cent of the $74 billion that will be added to global adspend. US is followed by China, Argentina, Indonesia and Russia, who together will contribute 63 per cent of the extra expenditure in the global ad market during the period.

With the rapid rise of online video and social media advertising, display is the fastest-growing sub-category, with 20 per cent. Paid search has been forecast to grow at an average rate of 15 per cent a year to 2015, driven by continued innovation from the search engines, including the display of richer product information and images within ads, better localisation of search results, and mobile ad enhancements like click-to-call and geo-targeting.

Mobile advertising is growing seven times faster than desktop internet and is forecast to grow by 77 per cent this year, followed by 56 per cent in 2014 and 48 per cent in 2015. Its total expenditure is expected to rise to $33.1 billion by 2015, from $8.3 billion in 2012.

Online classifieds has been forecast to grow at 4 per cent annually, though it has been subdued since 2009 owing to its dependence on the weak property and employment markets in the developed world.

Television’s market share is expected to peak to 40.1 per cent this year, before falling back marginally to 39.5 per cent in 2015. - TradeArabia News Service