Oman’s first official advertising agency, Izdihar, made its debut earlier this week. Its launch sends a positive signal to local, regional, and international media markets. Kudos to the Commercial Department of the Ministry of Information for this initiative.
Izdihar Agency’s unveiling took place this week at an advertising forum in the presence of Minister of Information Dr Abdullah bin Nasser al Harrasi. The event took place under the patronage of Minister of Commerce, Industry, and Investment Promotion Qais bin Mohammed al Yousef. Senior officials from Commercial Department attended the event.
The Director of Commercial Department at the Ministry of Information Fatima bint Muhammad Al Kalbani reiterated the importance of an official advertising agency. Said “Oman's first forum for advertising market forum will link advertisers with the ministry and organise media content,” she said at the launch event.
Izdihar Agency will provide media and advertising services locally and globally. Such advertising forums will boost partnerships between the ministry and private companies in Oman. A vibrant and thriving advertising market contributes significantly to a country’s economy.
Businesses will welcome this decision because focused advertising will spur business and trade in Oman. This decision will help create jobs. It gives opportunity to copywriters, photographers, videographers, and designers to do creative work. Print, outdoor, and digital media advertising helps to develop a knowledge-based progressive and thinking society.
Role of advertising agency
Good advertising agencies are the soul of a society. An advertising agency amplifies information on clients’ products and services. Messages broadcast through radio, television, and digital media help consumers to take good decisions on their purchases. Advertisements influence people.
Advertising, whether print or digital, engages community members by delivering information on various topics, not just doing sales pitch. Advertising campaigns help governments and municipality to broadcast information on public services such as healthcare and utility services.
Advertising involves content research, budgets, media campaigns, media planning, buying space, marketing strategies, managing client accounts, sales, and public relations. All these create many jobs. Advertising companies have separate departments to cover all these topics. They have an accounts team that does sales and customer service, a creative team that does the work for the customer after discussing media campaign ideas.
Advertising market value
The global advertising market reached a value of $590.3 billion in 2021. Analysts expect the market to cross US $792.7 Billion by 2027, at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 5.04% during 2021-2027.
According to experts the global digital marketing software market size was around $56.52 billion in 2021.They expect it to cross $66 billion in 2022-23.
Advertising on the Internet has increased significantly over the last five years. Analysts valued the global Internet advertising market size at $319 billion in 2019. They project it to reach $1,089 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 17.2% from 2020 to 2027.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) spending on advertising that hovered around $9.2 billion in 2021 will cross $12 billion in the next two years. Just the value of Internet advertising spending in the MENA region will reach $1,205 million this year, according an independent study.
According to a paper published by Statista.com the Internet will be the largest advertising medium in 2024, accounting for a little over 65 per cent of global advertising expenditure.
Digital media advertising will surpass traditional favourite television. The author of this paper expects television revenue to gain $7 billion between 2022 and 2024 while mobile Internet will gain $147 billion in the same period. Most of major media will have small gains in investments in this period. Newspapers and magazines will lose by roughly three and two billion respectively.
[Sudeep Sonawane, an India-based journalist, has worked in five countries in the Middle East and Asia. Email: [sudeep.sonawane@gmail.com]
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