Jordan’s media and ad spending revolution

AMMAN — For Wavemaker Amman, the digital transformation in media buying and planning was exactly what they’d been waiting for: For years, the agency had been investing in digital tools, technologies, and resources, all the while updating their capabilities and guiding their clients toward innovative media solutions.اضافة اعلان

But, as with any revolution, a certain tipping point needed to be reached before the floodgates could open and change could be fully realized.

Now, in the post-pandemic world, businesses throughout the Kingdom have been dramatically shifting how they plan and allocate their media budgets.

As Wavemaker Amman’s managing director, Hani Dakhlallah, explains, this shift has major implications—not only for brands and agencies, but for publishers as well.

He has identified several key trends in the Kingdom’s media and advertising landscape, and prescribes a number of ways in which all parties involved can leverage these changes to their advantage.

Shifting to digital spaces and priorities

It comes as little surprise that companies are quickly shifting their media budgets away from traditional media, and increasingly investing in digital spending.

“Clients want to maximize their ROI, and online media makes it easier to do that,” explains Dakhlallah. “In the past, brands would make bulk deals with specific media outlets, like key newspapers or TV stations.

With digital media’s more fragmented nature, clients can spread their budgets wider.” Additionally, he says, businesses are able to avoid committing huge portions of their advertising and media budgets to specific outlets or campaigns — instead, they have the freedom to shift and play around with how and where they spend.

Of course, brands haven’t completely abandoned traditional media: According to the latest figures from McKinsey, 40 percent of global ad spending is still happening in offline channels (with TV taking the largest portion of these revenues), but the scales continue to tip in favor of digital media.

And even if advertisers are still operating in both spaces, the rules of engagement are changing drastically. “In the last two or three years, clients are increasingly separating their traditional and digital media campaigns,” says Dakhlallah.

“The creative implementation has completely split.” For agencies, this means that the work is also being segmented: with many businesses now issuing entirely digital RFPs, agencies that weren’t ready for the digital transformation are finding themselves woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to capture new business opportunities.

For Wavemaker, however, this digital shift is something they’d been ready and eager to capitalize on.
Even before last year’s rebranding (from MEC), the agency had been taking strategic steps to provide clients with a well-rounded approach to media, content, and technology.

Now, Wavemaker is wholly focused on provoking positive growth for its clients — which means balancing advanced media technologies, world-class content, and meaningful consumer insights.

Targeting quality over quantity

Advertisers have also become more discerning in how they target consumers.

“Today, clients care more about precision than breadth,” Dakhlallah says.

“They’re less focused on mass audiences and are shifting more toward targeted segmentation.

” For forward-thinking agencies, this means completely changing the media planning approach.

As Dakhlallah explains, “Our approach to the planning process has become much more analytical and holistic: we look at all elements and considerations before developing a clear strategy forward.”

Like the agency’s clients, Wavemaker is concerned with successfully reaching key demographics, which means being more discerning and evidence-driven in their approach, in order to achieve the best possible ROI.

After all, brands are less concerned these days with the total amount they’re spending, and more occupied with how far those dinars are going.

The value of good data

When your ad spending becomes less mass-oriented and more targeted, segmented, and focused, there’s one factor that begins to matter above all else: data.

“Data is king these days,” says Daklallah. “In the past, clients would primarily ask about rates and costs — now, all they want to see are stats and analytics.”

Advertisers are ultimately looking for digital media channels that will allow them to reach the right audience: for publishers, this means that investing in robust analytics tools is crucial when it comes to attracting ad revenues.

And because digital media offers more diverse and precise metrics for measuring the impact of online advertising, brands and agencies can implement campaigns that are increasingly more intuitive, intelligent, and cost-effective.

Similarly, finding strategic, value-added partnerships in the digital media space can be a key asset for brands, agencies, and publishers alike.

For Wavemaker, this has included cultivating a close, mutually beneficial relationship with Arab Trade Desk (ATD), the newest innovator in Jordan’s digital media sphere.

In addition to leveraging ATD’s wide-reaching network of online and offline partners (complementing its own robust media network), Wavemaker is able to provide its clients with additional data services that allow them to maximize ROI more effectively than ever before.

More than providing rich insights and a solid return on investments, the digital media spending revolution offers brands a kind of agility and flexibility that offline campaigns don’t—and this agility is especially crucial in unpredictable times.

“We’re living in a world where you have to expect the unexpected,” Dakhlallah says, “and digital media allows brands to adapt to these changes with much greater ease.”

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