Posts Tagged ‘radio’

Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Scroll down the page for survey download links

The figures in our new Media Consumption & Habits of MENA Internet Users Survey simply confirm what everyone involved in the Middle East’s growing digital marketing industry has already been talking about for the past year or two: Internet connectivity has become pervasive amongst many of our key target audiences and is now a significant part of their daily lives. The new research survey conducted by Effective Measure in conjunction with Spot On PR, underscores that the Internet opportunity is not just something that exists in the USA or Europe, its right here in the MENA region too. It’s not just a rich thing. It’s not just a youth thing. (And its not just a Facebook thing either). The Internet’s reach is now much broader than that and its influence in the Middle East and North Africa is now truly rivalling its traditional media counterparts and providing marketers with real (and highly measureable) alternatives.

Here are some of the survey’s key findings:

- MENA Internet users now spend more time browsing the Internet than they do watching TV.

MENA Internet users daily access of Internet exceeds TV

- 88% of those surveyed stated that they access the Internet daily

- 71% of those surveyed stated that they watched television daily.

- Most traditional media have peaks and troughs in attention. Radio and newspapers achieve peak share of audience in the morning. Television audiences peak in the evening. However, the Internet holds audience attention fairly consistently throughout the day and well into the night.

- 28% more respondents watched TV during peak viewing hours than when viewership is at its lowest, at 7%),

- 20% of respondents stated that they use the Internet at any time-period surveyed, peaking at 33% in the evening (just 13% higher than the lowest period).

- Predictably, 73% of the survey’s respondents cited email as the activity they most often carried out online, ranking abover all other online activities.

- Social networking and search activities followed as the next highest ranking online activities for MENA Internet users, all coming it at about 40%.

- 54% of Internet users surveyed used mobile applications daily.

- 79% of Internet users surveyed spent up to three hours per day updating their social networks. 20% spent more than three hours updating their social networks.

- Internet users were more positive to companies and brands using “Internet marketing” than they were towards companies and brands using “social media marketing”.

- Most responses to our survey showed little variance between male and female respondents. However, there were a number of notable differences between the genders in their stated experiences with social media.

Survey Downloads

Download the full survey report (PDF)

Download the press release (English, Word doc)

Download the press release (Arabic, Word doc)

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Creative Commons

Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users by Effective Measure and Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Want to read more?

If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:

15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)

Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

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Posted in Applications, Facebook, General, Internet, Internet research, Measurement, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Mobile, Newspapers, Online marketing, Twitter, brand marketing, public relations, research, social media | 9 Comments »

Radio Gaga

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Radio is probably the most undervalued advertising/communication medium of the lot: something of a shame, it’s one of my favourite ‘legacy’ media…

I had always thought of this as a Middle East problem, but apparently it’s the case worldwide. People just won’t invest appropriately in creating compelling executions for radio.

I’ve also always believed that crappy radio advertising stemmed from the relative affordability of the airtime on a slot by slot basis, that it was the consequent underinvestment that lies behind the awful executions that we all know and loathe so well. Because, let’s face it, Middle East radio advertising is mired in awfulness that is beyond simply bad – it’s heroically bad.

However, the almost total lack of data on the reach and influence of radio is, I believe, a uniquely Middle East problem. It’s hard to actually define who’s listening to what, when. And that, of course, makes it difficult to justify investing in radio from a cost per listener point of view.

Taking the issue from the other end of the pipeline might help – what’s the value of radio if you look at results. For instance, if you promote an event in a public place, say a shopping mall, over radio do people actually pitch up? If you ask for a response, for instance a phone-in or an SMS, by radio, do people respond?

The answer is not only yes, but it can also be a resounding yes – depending on how well your message is put together and how it resonates with its audience. Radio can be a very targeted medium indeed – and one interesting piece of evidence for this is to be found in the growing relationship between radio and social media. Thousands of people are starting to follow Dubai DJ Catboy, for instance, on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – and as that relationship matures and strengthens, new followers are being added hourly. And those followers are active participants – they respond to competitions, give opinions, take part in what has become, in a very real sense, the ‘conversation’ that every Web 2.0 proponent will gladly talk to you about until your ears bleed. (Incidentally, over 4,000 people are currently following Simon ‘Catboy’ Smedley on Twitter).

So I’d like to suggest perhaps a slightly different approach to radio – one that’s not based so much on ‘How many people are getting our message when we scream slogans and benefits at them’ but more on ‘What stuff can radio help us to encourage people to do and participate with them in doing’ – the action in itself being a symptom of a deeper understanding of, and relationship with, your audience.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named ‘A Moment with McNabb’ columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

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Posted in General | No Comments »