2022 was a busy year for the MENA digital industry and the IAB was no exception. In our third full year of operating, we enjoyed a significant increase in tempo, and a noticeable increase in industry support towards our vision of driving positive growth in the MENA digital advertising economy by nurturing the community, accelerating knowledge sharing, and establishing accountability standards that cultivate trust and credibility. Building on the foundations of 2021, we collectively achieved a lot to be proud of and we now have a strong platform going into 2023.

Some of the highlights of the year include the completion of our first Attitudes to Programmatic Study, where a task force of 20 different programmatic experts from 15 member companies constructed a survey in which they were able to generate unique insights into the state of the programmatic market in MENA for the first time. (view here)

Our now-annual Adspend survey was bigger, more detailed and more insightful, due to the increase in participation and willingness to share insights, actuals and estimates. Pegging the growth of the market at over 25% and sizing the overall market at $4,6B, positioned the MENA market as a fast-paced market not to be ignored. The resulting interest from both local and global players provides further evidence of the role these initiatives can play in driving growth, which are only possible with your support. (view here)

2022 was also the year our members elected a new board for a 2-year term. This gave us an opportunity to relaunch committees and task forces into more clearly defined and more active working groups. The resulting engagement from the industry in hands-on task forces has seen well over 80 individuals from 34 different member companies take part in initiatives to drive new knowledge, insights and sharing in an effort to grow the industry and our people.

Many of the initiatives have longer timeframes, such as our L&D programme or our attribution and attention workstreams, while others have delivered short term industry benefit, some of which are highlighted below.

• The CTV task force including 14 people from 10 companies commissioned a CTV Landscape presentation which was shared at a webinar to which as many as 160 people attended from across the region.  The Taskforce is now working on delivering additional insights for our members such as ad pricing, adload insights, landscape development and content strategies. (view here)
• The Insights task force released a Pulse on the predictions for the market in Q4. This Pulse Insights series will be repeated throughout 2023 to provide our members with current insights into what the overall market perspectives on multiple topical areas are. (view here)

Our membership continues to grow as we collectively add more value to the industry. In 2022 we saw membership grow by 40% including a mix of companies from tech, measurement, research alongside agencies, publishers and sales houses, further enhancing our position as a full ecosystem member body. We expect 2023 to continue this trend with a keen focus on attracting more non-Dubai based members, more advertisers and more small businesses.

One of the most exciting developments for the year is our rebrand. As part of our efforts to ensure we are fully representative of the whole MENA market, we have begun the process of shifting from IAB GCC to IAB MENA. This is a conscious reflection of the market dynamics and the role we can play in growing the overall market through sharing insights, connecting talents and driving expertise across the whole MENA region.

We are already looking at early 2023, and our task forces are planning a number of initiatives, including amongst many others:

• a UN Women collaboration in which we share how businesses can benefit from implementing the UN’s Women empowerment principles;
• the launch of a DOOH whitepaper;
• insights into the understanding and best practices around attribution;
• shine a light on the potential challenges and opportunities of attention as a planning tool, metric and trading currency;
• a perspective on Mixed Reality, AR and VR;
• launching a programme to attract top young talent, through university outreach while demystifying the roles in digital advertising

And many more!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed throughout the year and we look forward to an even more successful 2023. We have some exciting programmes planned with the promise of even more impact, none of which would be possible without your ongoing support.

All the best for the end of year and into 2023!