No serious company would start a business without thorough due diligence, especially one looking to enter the Middle East's rapidly maturing media industry.
So it is difficult to see how the headline figures for advertising spending in the MENA region could be deemed misleading to any business that has taken the effort to study the market.
The figure of up to US$15.3 billion (Dh56.19bn) is about four times some estimates of the true advertising spending.
A number of heavy-hitting local media organisations are active in the region, while a plethora of international media companies have launched in the Middle East in recent years.
Such companies should have done their research on the local advertising market and are likely to have a more realistic view of it than is gleaned from the headline figure.
Take the Arab Media Outlook 2009-2013, produced by the Dubai Press Club and Value Partners Management Consulting. The study predicted that total ad spending in the Arab world would stand at a more reasonable $5.1bn last year, based on 50 per cent of the gross figures.
As Eddie Moutran, the chief executive of the advertising agency Memac Ogilvy, said of the gross advertising figures: "I doubt if there's anyone who takes those numbers exactly as they are. Nobody in his right mind is going to look at those numbers and build a huge organisation to cater for it."
While the inflated ad spending figures may be misleading on the surface, delve a little deeper and it is not difficult to find a more realistic view of the market.
But if you do delve deeper, you also find another problem endemic in the industry: a severe lack of accountability and transparency.
Very few publications in the MENA region are audited; there are no accurate TV audience figures; and there are virtually no figures on online ad spending and readership.
Only a couple of regional media companies are publicly listed, which means most do not disclose figures for public scrutiny, and the amount of discount advertising offered by individual players is not known.
However, there are signs of hope on the horizon. Publishers are beginning to see the benefits of auditing, which gives advertisers an independent view of readership figures.
The planned TV audience measurement initiative in the UAE will herald a new age of accountability for advertising on television, the dominant medium for advertising spending.
As several media executives have pointed out, greater transparency on audience numbers will eventually lead to less of a scramble to discount advertising and give a more accurate and stable picture of the market as a whole.
If such initiatives are a success, due diligence will soon become a much easier process for those looking to enter the local media industry.
