Yesterday's quarterly advertising report by the Pan Arab Research Center was as notable for what it didn't contain as what it did: No Emaar, no Nakheel, no Dubai Holding, property developers at all among he first-quarter top advertisers, save Hydra among television advertisers and Ocean View midway down the list of top 12 newspaper advertisers. The absence is striking, since as recently as last quarter, property companies made up half of the top newspaper advertisers.
Their pullback resulted in a 60 per cent decline in property advertising spending in the UAE last quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Since property developers have always been the big spenders in print and on the airwaves, it's no surprise then that the UAE saw its total advertising spending drop -- for the first time in anyone's memory -- by 14 per cent. Ouch!
But in context this number is not so bad. The UAE is just coming off of several years of 40 per cent annual growth. And yesterday JPMorgan announced expectations for global ad spending to slide nearly 6 per cent in 2009, with US declining 9 per cent. Local ad spending in the US will decline by 20 per cent, according to JPMorgan.