Yahoo's oasis of hope: the Arab world

On a global level, things are not looking good for the internet giant Yahoo.

The company's chief executive Carol Bartz was unceremoniously sacked by phone earlier this month, as the company's board lost patience with her unfulfilled promises to revive falling advertising revenues.

Yet one of the few moments of hope during Ms Bartz's tumultuous 30-month tenure at Yahoo must have been her visit to the UAE in June.

For while the company's advertising revenues have been hit elsewhere, they are on the up in the Middle East and North Africa.

As The National reports this morning, the company expects a 20 to 30 per cent increase in its Mena-region advertising revenues this year - double what is forecast for the online industry as a whole, at around 10 to 15 per cent.

"We're growing at close to twice the rate of organic growth in the market for digital," said Ahmed Nassef, the vice president and managing director of Yahoo Middle East. "We're one of the fastest-growing regions within Yahoo globally."

Yahoo's forecast of 20 to 30 per cent growth is, admittedly, on a relatively small base. According to Google, the total online advertising market in the Mena region is set to rise to $175 million this year - a tiny percentage of the overall ad spending.

Yet Yahoo certainly sees it worthwhile to invest in the region, as it is launching a number of new products to help it cash in on the growth of the online industry.

A regional version of its US news portal will be launched by the end of this year, as well as its Arabic-language email system, said Mr Nassef.

"Arabic mail is rolling out in the next couple of months, and the same with our global news product," he said.

"This will give us all the bells and whistles that Yahoo US News has. In the US, Yahoo News is the number one news destination, ahead of anybody else in that space - ahead of CNN or the New York Times. We'll have exactly the same functionality in English and Arabic for our region."

Yahoo has also launched new types of advertising products, including 'behavioural targeting', which tracks users' online activity and delivers appropriate ads.

It is also in talks with various 'daily deals' companies, as it looks to capitalise on the growth in companies such as Groupon and Cobone in the Middle East.

"Globally we've done a lot of group-deals type partnerships. In the US, we have a partnership with Groupon around group buying," said Mr Nassef. "So we're in talks with a lot of these companies."

Yahoo is also working with other online companies to launch a Middle East arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which would help them provide more accurate data about the region, Mr Nassef said. Such a move would help justify Yahoo's claims that the regional online industry is bucking the more depressing trends seen in other areas of the media.

And so, for now, it seems that the departure of Ms Bartz has not hit Yahoo in this part of the world. "It has not impacted us one bit," said Mr Nassef. "For us, it's businesses as usual."