MidEast Media | Online scene in Arabia
In an industry that struggles for recognition and still falling behind in the media game in the Middle Easr, nothing can be more devastating than immaturity and unhealthy competition. Online failed to attract more than 1% of total advertising spends in the Middle East and managed to obtain a weak position on marketers’ plans.
I have been working for Maktoob Group for 2 years and I’ve never used my one-year-old blog to promote their services or criticize their competitors, but when I noticed the continues criticism acted by bloggers work for Maktoob’s competitors I thought how independent those bloggers are? Could it be they are being pushed by their employers? Or this simply represents their personal opinion?
In my past experience I’ve initiated contacts with few of those competitors in purpose of exchange of services where I faced irrationality and immaturity.
At the beginning I contacted AlBawaba in the purpose of advertising cooperation, but for no reason AlBawaba refused, there answer were “we don’t want to cooperate with Maktoob”.
Jeeran seemed to be more open-minded, an agreement for banner exchange were signed between both parties, but when it came to implementation Jeeran turned their back to the deal without even any explanation, I sent many e-mails and called more than once but no answer.
The devastating experience was with MSN Arabia, the director of souq.com was negotiating MSN Arabia to promote the newly launched auction site by Maktoob, MSN Arabia were more than happy to do business until I was involved and they knew that souq.com is a Maktoob company, they refused this deal even it was paid just like any other client.
A wired reply came from MSN Arabia saying “if Maktoob.com is the largest Arab online community why do you need to promote souq on MSN? Isn’t Maktoob enough?” Maktoob doesn’t cater 100% of the market share and if it did then MSN Arabia and other portals won’t be exist at the first place.
I can understand if they refused to promote Maktoob Blogs for example on their websites since they have the same service but if they lack this service what would hurt them to introduce it to their users? They can even play around it and be smart.
Even when I meet some of the competitors I can sense the feelings of bitter and resentment in their attitude. If we look at the west we can find Google, Yahoo! & Microsoft cooperate with each other; I mean it’s not odd to see Yahoo! advertising using Google AdWords.
And the question remains: When the Arabian online companies will become mature enough to cooperate with each other?
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Amr said
am March 18 2007 @ 7:53 pm
Man..
am so sad for that, especially after the huge effort i did in souq
Mano, ronie was definitely wrong when he contacted such companies :S and i dont know if he discussed this with sophie or not, but am sure if they were awake, they would never make such step.
anyways, souq is doing good, and someday the community will be massive enough to make msn and alma3′ara look for a campaign woth souq
finally, my best regards to u and ronie and aboud and diana, and nousa and every guy working now on souq
Samer Marzouq said
am March 18 2007 @ 8:01 pm
I agree with you Amr, but the idea was to promote souq to the internet community in Jordan and that requires advertising on many websites so that you can reach as much as possible.
Cheers man.
Mohanned said
am March 19 2007 @ 12:02 am
My friend:
It is competetion, If there is nothing in return then why cooperate? This kind of cooperation and knowledge transfer is worth $$$..
Another thing, the online community in the arab world is still a small baby, infrastructure, culture, freedom are all obstales in the face of the spread of the internet..The e-business is not mature enough sir, when becomes mature enough you will see amazon and other companies enter our market and then bye bye for local companies..
Samer Marzouq said
am March 19 2007 @ 9:08 am
Mohanned any cooperation of any kind should return some benefits for both parties, otherwise its useless and no one can force any one to go through it or blame the other part for not singing the agreement. But a simple explanation should be presented to the second party, not signing an agreement then turn back or refusing a client for no good reason.
And I agree with you that the online community in the Arab world it still facing lots of troubles and that why I was saying no need for such attitudes from online content and services providers.
??Qais Sami said
am March 19 2007 @ 9:09 am
Yes! The online business in Arab world not yet mature also it’s not that big market to see the online icons in US & Europe to invade MENA region. One of Journalists asked Yahoo! CEO - Semel “Why until now you didn’t launch Middle Eastern version of Yahoo?” his answer was “It’s very small market, even this market doesn’t represent 0.01 from the total revenue of Yahoo”. Yes, they do have small office in Dubai as advertising representative office but the MENA market still small and the local competitors are not brave to create unique products that suite the Arabic user. If you notice the local online websites MENA region it’s copycat models, making money model in US definitely it’s different than in Middle East and this is because of user behavior.
Samer Marzouq said
am March 19 2007 @ 9:17 am
True Qais, and since international major online players didn’t eye MENA region yet, even that Google did, its an opportunity for local players to strengthen their position and gain users’ trust and approval, not to compete in this way.
Omar K. said
am March 24 2007 @ 11:20 pm
Hello Samer,
My recollection of the event was that we were waiting for you guys to send us the codes!
We are still open for a link exchange, drop me a line and we will follow up from where we left.
Samer Marzouq said
am March 25 2007 @ 11:36 am
Thank you Omar for your comment, I remember that our banner was sent to you but then nothing was implemented.
Anyway it was long time ago and I hope that we all will cooperate on many levels.
Mariam Ayyash said
am April 7 2007 @ 8:55 pm
side note, (i am more on usability issues), the souq website samer, with all due respect, looks great… for a 1997er! everything about that site is old, i know the service is good, but its not great at all, so while we are all dancing around greater opportunities, i wish we can just focus on the real thing and produce a state-of-the-art service… souq.com is a poineer, they practically have no compitition, they should do better than that.
Samer Marzouq said
am April 8 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Well thats another issue that can be discussed in a different post, but on the business and marketing communications level we are still all late.
casualPR » Blog Archive » MidEast Media | Online scene in Arabia said
am November 16 2007 @ 2:37 pm
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