Sir Martin Sorrell

The business prospects for Middle East advertising firms are clearly rising, or such an eminent personality as Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of the huge global WPP Group, would not have been in town last week.

But Sir Martin was also in Dubai to launch the new GCC Association of Advertisers with its mission for greater openness and transparency, something he cares about passionately.

'We are seeing worldwide growth in the advertising industry, particularly in Asia, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and of course the Middle East despite its political problems,' he said.

'The Middle East has growth opportunities for our clients with 300 million people and the kind of demographics that command attention in the short, medium and long term. By that I mean a young population.'

The GCC Association of Advertisers has already launched a TV Charter to keep the number of advertisements per hours under control and establish broadcasting standards for advertising. Now it is going to introduce 'people meters' so that advertisers can see who is watching what, where and when in Saudi Arabia and later in the UAE.

'Better transparency will speed up the growth of the market as a whole,' explains Sir Martin, whose major worldwide brands include advertising agencies Y&R, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, Grey Worldwide, Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller. More than 330 of the Fortune Global 500 companies are WPP clients.

'The key for agencies is execution. We need to get away from intuitive decision making and people meters provide a way of measuring audiences that have been proven around the world. It is not a new technology. We are just introducing something which is well established as a tool.'

But can the same sort of technique be applied to the print media, to magazines and newspapers, or perhaps to radio?

'Radio, yes, newspapers and magazines are more difficult,' he told AME Info. 'It is a question of taking things step-by-step and our first concern is television and to establish audience sizes.'

However, with the support of clients who comprise 75% of advertising expenditure in the GCC the new association looks off to a very good start.

The benefit for consumers should be a better media service as advertising expenditure will gradually be allocated according to the preferences of the listener rather than the best guess of the advertising agency.

'The GCCAA will benefit all parties,' said Sir Martin. 'That means advertisers properly concerned with their return-on-investment and media owners looking to improve their advertiser and viewer offer. The importance of advertising is such that all moves designed to make its effectiveness more measurable are to be warmly welcomed.'