Industry leaders from across the MENA media and marketing ecosystem gathered for a New Digital Age virtual roundtable. In part two of the writeup, we discuss talent, regulation, privacy and the future of the region’s media industry. Read part one here.
In attendance were James Dutton, Chief Product Officer at UM MENAT; Richard Fitzgerald, CEO and founder of Augustus Media; Sherry Mansour, Managing Director of Seedtag MENA; Angeline Lodhia Shalabi, co-founder, Semantic Pulse; Wissam Najjar, Chief Operating Officer at Omnicom Media MENA; Nick Walsh, founder and CEO of Migrate Group; Terry Kane, managing director for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at The Trade Desk; and Ian Manning, Executive Director of IAB Middle East & North Africa.
The talent conversation was one of the liveliest of the session, with guests broadly agreeing that attracting people to the region is no longer the challenge, given the lifestyle proposition on offer across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and increasingly Saudi Arabia.
Mansour said: “Attracting talent is easy. Retention and development is the challenge. If someone leaves, you have ten or twenty people coming to take their place. But retention is where companies need to invest, in career progression and long-term opportunities.”
Manning said that while the regional allure makes recruitment straightforward, companies must avoid becoming complacent. “I think the risk is maybe being lazy on talent, because it’s a desirable place to live. So, I think maybe there’s not enough rigor around who’s working in what positions.”
However, Manning agreed that the macroeconomic environment remains a massive driver for skilled individuals looking for upward trajectory. “The entire economic situation for advertising globally does look like it’s going to slow over the period, but I think the region will still perform, will still outperform many of those other regions. There is something wonderful about working in growth, and it’s inspiring.”
Dutton introduced the concept of moving the region from talent importer to talent exporter, describing how UM has been placing people trained in Dubai and the UAE in markets across the US, Europe and APAC.
“We have a lot of people who’ve been born here. They’re not imports. What we’re trying to do, working across a global agency network, is train people in a very advanced and innovative market and export them to other markets. It’s a nice shift that the new generation of leaders in this industry can come from here.”
Walsh celebrated the multicultural make-up of regional teams as a structural advantage rather than a complication. “What I’ve always loved about this region is the ability to build completely multicultural teams, different backgrounds, different languages, different skill sets. It’s a beautiful opportunity and it’s completely unique globally. We can attract the best talent in the world, and the job of that best talent is to bring expertise that doesn’t exist here yet and to bring everyone up to that level.”
Regulation, privacy and the open internet
The final discussion topic was regulation and platform power. Fitzgerald said that MENA’s regulatory landscape is more fragmented than Europe’s but, in some respects, more adaptive to the realities of the current media environment.
The UAE’s approach to influencer regulation, for example, treating content creators as publishers and issuing dedicated licences, has been genuinely progressive. “Some of the regulation in this region is actually more advanced than other parts of the world for this new media environment. But with AI, it’s moving even faster again, and you have to act differently in every country.”
Mansour pointed to the UAE’s personal data protection law as a signal of the direction of travel, noting that agencies and clients alike are moving from what she described as surveillance-based tracking towards cookieless solutions that respect privacy while maintaining precision.
Kane brought it back to the fundamental premise of The Trade Desk’s approach to the market: a belief in the open internet, in local media and in a healthy, competitive ecosystem. “A healthy media environment is a reflection of an omnichannel approach. It’s not just social media. The opportunity really does sit within the evolution of connected television, digital out-of-home, audio, a rejuvenation of the Arab media environment, enabling it to be bought smarter and more technology-driven,” he said.
“This is the moment. This is what I’m so excited about for the future here. It’s not one channel that makes the difference. It’s all of them. And you have to maintain privacy throughout.”
Five years out: hopes and ambitions
The session closed with each participant sharing their biggest realistic hope for the region over the next five years. The responses painted a picture of a region with a genuine sense of purpose.
Dutton pointed to the internationalisation of Middle Eastern brands as the story he is most excited about. Locally-grown beauty, manufacturing and lifestyle brands are beginning to look outward, wanting to be the first rather than waiting to see what other markets have already done, he said.
Fitzgerald’s hope was closer to home: that independent media companies and adtech businesses from across the region go public, create jobs locally and generate the homegrown success stories the ecosystem needs.
Najjar put it in terms of platform dependency. “My wish is that we see a more balanced media value chain emerge, one that strengthens local broadcasters, streaming platforms, retail media networks and regional technology players alongside global platforms.”
Kane was characteristically direct: “MENA is accelerating. It’s not emerging. This region is going through a renaissance. The youth population is driving a huge part of that. It’s going to be educated, fast-moving, entrepreneurial and tech-focused.”
Walsh’s hope was reputational. “This is home, and the criticism isn’t fair. My hope is that the region gets the credit it deserves, that it’s recognised globally as a world class hub. I don’t think we’re getting that credit right now, and it needs to change.”
Shalabi closed with a forecast that saw human-led AI, hyper-localised and scalable, as the mechanism that will allow the region to address its biggest challenges simultaneously: cultural adaptation, language diversity, data protection and budget efficiency.
“I think MENA might lead the way in using AI in the most powerful way, and maybe the world follows after. But that’s just my opinion.”
It was a fitting note on which to end: a region that has seen enough disruption to be unsentimental about challenges, but one with every reason to believe the best of its future is still to come.
