Media giant mbc is utilizing new channels such as internet and mobile to deliver its content to Arab viewers, 9 Arabic series being aired on mbc1 during the Holy Month of Ramadan will be available online for viewers from all over the world.
Does this mean that the wind of change has finally blew on Middle East’s media?
The Arabic content on the internet is still weak, it’s growing but if you take random search queries, most likely you won’t be very pleased with results, people used to blame it on search engines for not understanding the Arabic language, but I guess Google and other search engines made a big progress in this field. So it’s a matter of the availability of the content rather than the ability to reach it.
MBC is, by far, the biggest media operator in the region, imagine the amount of Arabic content they can contribute to the internet, they can easily build a huge portal that attracts millions of visitors, and by that pioneering the new media, which is coming sooner or later, even if it’s far from being fetched, they have nothing to lose, it won’t effect their viewership on TV, and even if it did, people will still look for quality programs, which MBC shows on it’s satellite channels, so the audience is gonna be the same, whether on TV or on the internet.
In 2007, TV catered 48% of the total advertising spends in the Middle East, compared to 0.6% spent on online advertising, so for such a large-scale media operator, online advertising in the Middle East is the crumbs of the cake. We are talking about $4 billion spent on TV advertising in 2007, and I guess MBC’s share is pretty big.
The other issue here is the reach, in a report that was published by Madar research couple of years ago, the total number of internet users in the Arab world exceeded 26 millions, a new report by Maktoob Research talked earlier this year about 40 million internet users in the Arab world, I guess somebody said that this number includes Iran as well, but when you talk about 85 million Arab viewers tuned in to watch the final episode of the Turkish soap opera Noor on mbc4, that’s twice the number of the digital Arabic audience.
But I still believe it’s a golden opportunity for mbc to enrich, and master, the Arabic content on the internet, for instance, they can create a video archive for their own shows and series, they can also create a wikipedia-like portal that includes information about Arab actors, singers, artists… etc., in addition to shows, films and series, it can even be a user-generated portal, and that would be the ultimate.
Finally Google decided to take action and respond to the war that has been declared by the empire of evil, Microsoft, which is trying so hard to end Google’s domination over the search engines business, they tried to acquire Yahoo more than once, they placed a lot of pressure on Yahoo’s CEO and board of directors, and accused them for being inefficient, they tried to convince shareholders to sell their shares, and eventually after hitting many walls, Microsoft decided to create a whole new army of search engines to compete with Google.
Microsoft announced its 8th edition of the Internet Explorer, which will include two new features; InPrivateBrowsing that will allow users to browse the internet without leaving any trace, no history, no temporary files and cookies, and the second one is InPrivateBlocking, which allows users to block content from a third party, like ads for instant. Seems like this action has sent a warning sign to Google, which runs a giant advertising network that can affected bu such features.
I don’t know what’s the big deal about these features!
So Google decided to respond, and announced the launch of a new web browser, titled Chrome, the beta version should be available today in 100 countries for Windows only, the company promised to launch versions for Mac & Linux.
Chrome seems to be interesting, you can read more about it on Google’s blog
Image courtesy Cnet News
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I came across an interesting new feature in Google, as you are typing your query, Google will start suggesting queries, each along with number of results that will be gained through this query. This is a very amazing feature.
Dubai is, by far, leading the region in so many aspects, but when it comes to media, and specifically TV, Dubai is still in the process, the top Pan Arab TV stations are owned by countries other than the UAE; Al-Jazeera is owned by Qatar, Rotana network and MBC Group are Saudi ventures, Egypt owns the Melody network, while Lebanon, along with Saudi investors, owns Future & LBC.
However things changed, couple of years ago Dubai TV did a major rebranding exercise and became much better in terms of the image and the programs. MBC2’s rival, One TV, rebranded to Dubai One TV, personally I though they were trying to benefit of Dubai’s growing popularity to promote the channel, but I have to say Dubai One is one of my favorite TV stations now. In addition, Dubai Media Incorporated has launched two more stations; Sama Dubai and Dubai Sports.
Recently the Arab Media Group raised the bar and launched two major international TV stations, MTV Arabia and Nickeldeon Arabia. I was reading on the Arabian Business about a new TV station that will be launched on the first day of Ramadan, Noor Dubai is a 24-hour TV station that will broadcast several shows about issues that concerns families in the UAE and the Arab world, the station will be in Arabic, and will be followed by an English version next year.
But this raises a question about the potential that Dubai sees in these new developments, according to the research firm, Arab Advisors Group, TV advertising rates dropped down due to the high competition between the growing number of TV stations in the Middle East, and yet TV catered more than 48% of the total advertising spends in the Middle East last year, followed by Press, which catered 46%.
The current advertising scene, which is obviously monopolized by few titans, will not allow any growth for the rest of media such as online and outdoor.
myPicks Beijing 2008 is a new Facebook application that will get you in the Olympics atmosphere, basically all you have to do is to predict the winners of the gold, silver and bronze medals in the upcoming events, and if your guessing was right you and your country will gain points.
The application features the competing athletes/countries with their photos and flags, and you should drag and drop. The USA leads the way with the total number of players and the total won points.
