OSN CTV offering seeks to tackle challenges in MENA

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TV in the Middle East and North Africa cannot be considered one homogenised market, a leading player in the region told The Media Leader.

Hamid Davari, director of ad sales at OSN, a pay-TV provider across 22 markets that also operates a premium subscription VOD platform, discussed TV dynamics in MENA at The Future of TV Advertising Global in December.

“We’re a little late on the streaming side,” he admitted, pointing to slow internet penetration in some countries in the region, though access is high in markets such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

This variance also applies to pricing when it comes to TV services and packages.

Importantly, this is true of advertising costs.

“In our core countries, we have CPMs which are higher than Europe — more in line with the US,” Davari told Omar Oakes, former editor-in-chief at The Media Leader.

This is “a lot to do with lack of supply when it comes to premium video, OTT or connected television inventory”, he explained.

Davari continued: “We do have a big issue with linear TV in our region, especially when it comes to pricing, that comes from a lack of measurement and data, and how TV was bought and sold.”

OSN recently rolled out an addressable TV proposition to tackle some of these challenges in the region, in a similar vein to Sky’s AdSmart, which launched in 2014.

Although the MENA TV market is behind Europe in some ways, learnings in the latter have helped OSN accelerate its own progress.

As Davari pointed out: “We just launched a month ago and we’re already testing out programmatic.”