New poll shows Internet the media of today, not the future

The sheer scale of the UAE population's move online is breathtaking. More than 80% of the 779 UAE residents who took part in the poll said they log on to the Internet either several times a day or are constantly online. And the majority spends one to two hours on the Internet every day.

What are they doing in this time? Not surprisingly 99% use email, but next most popular activities are research and information gathering at 89% and news at 84%. There is then quite a large gap down to Internet banking at 57% and bill payment at 52%.

Interestingly travel and hotel booking and shopping are at 42% and 38% respectively - offering a major new business opportunity for some companies to tap. But this sudden move online in the UAE has caught many businesses by surprise who thought it could not happen here.

AME Info readership

AME Info certainly felt the move online last year with the 175% increase in unique users between its first and second ABC Electronic audits, with 651,000 unique users logging on last October, making the website the largest business media covering the Middle East by a wide margin.

Maybe this should not come as such a surprise. The UAE has an affluent population with access to the latest in Broadband through Etisalat, and is just catching up with a worldwide trend towards much higher levels of Internet use.

The Internet offers a low-cost source of instant news and information beamed from all around the world. And with Broadband video and radio have been added to its menu of services, and have certainly proven very popular on AME Info.

Plus the UAE has a high proportion of expatriate residents who want to keep in touch with relatives and friends scattered around the world. Email is an exceptionally cheap and easy medium to use for personal and business correspondence.

Advertising opportunity

However, the amount of expenditure on Internet based advertising and sponsorship in the UAE is less than one per cent of the total amount spent on advertising. Surely this is something that has to change if people are no longer reading newspapers and magazines but logging on to the Internet instead.

Advertising will always follow the eyeballs. Hence the profusion of billboards on the roads of Dubai to advertise to the traffic stuck in peak-hour jams. But surely the advertising sector has largely missed the biggest new opportunity which is to hit consumers at their office desks and at home when they switch on the Internet.

Moreover, the Internet offers many ways to cleverly target and impress viewers. But in the UAE we are not now talking about the media of the future, this is the media of today.