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The advertising industries in the central North African countries of the Maghreb have reached disparate levels of development. Total monitored ad spend in 2008 amounted to $300 million in Morocco and $80 million in Tunisia. Although Algeria spent $100 million, this was across a population of 34 million (Morocco has roughly the same number of inhabitants, and Tunisia has around 10 million). The gap is even more obvious in the outdoor sector.

Morocco is the most advanced of the three countries. With 22 percent of total ad spend, outdoor has reached maturity in the kingdom. Around 20 years ago, the country became the first in the Maghreb to develop a modern advertising industry, and it represents the largest market in the region. Last year, 64 percent of total Maghreb ad spend was concentrated in Morocco, where the largest clients are based. Three of the five biggest spenders in the region are from the country, and with $47 million invested in advertising in 2007, Maroc Télécom is the region’s most prominent client.
By contrast, in small and densely populated Tunisia (the country covers just 163,610 square kilometers), which opened up to mass consumption and advertising 15 years ago, the advertising landscape is getting overcrowded.
The Tunisian outdoor industry has been flourishing, and has grown to boast a 40 percent share of total ad expenditure in 2008, but this seems to be its saturation point.
In Algeria, where advertising picked up more than a decade later than its neighbors, outdoor still lags behind TV and press, but prospects are excellent nonetheless. “In Algeria there are a lot of new companies, like JCDecaux, which won the airport advertising for a lot of money,” says Mohamed Borhan Khiari, general director of Bienvue, a Tunisian outdoor supplier.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE FACTOR. Anywhere in the world, a well-adapted urban infrastructure and planned locations for signage are necessary for outdoor advertising to fully thrive. In Morocco, the country’s business hub of Casablanca had 1,166 four-by-three-meter panels and 717 lollipops (with municipal information on one side and advertising on the other) in 2005. The city retains the lion’s share of ad spend in Morocco.
Thirteen active networks, including the country’s pioneering FC Com (First Contact Communication, established in 1998) and New Publicity, have rapidly expanded to cover the whole country.
Alternatives to standard static signage have also been emerging, with mobile advertising on trucks and buses available since international specialist Mobil’Affich set up in the kingdom in 2000. Ouadih Madih, general manager of Mobil’Affiche, is predictably optimistic about his sector of the market. He says mobile advertising should eventually make up 33 percent of total outdoor advertising revenue in Morocco.
Early on, a solid infrastructure was available for outdoor suppliers in Tunisia, where a small surface area makes outdoor easier to handle.
With clear sales procedures split between municipalities and the equipment ministry, a fairly professional and structured industry has emerged over the years, dominated by six major companies, including Karoui Outdoor (formerly Régie 7, established in Morocco in 2002 and in Algeria in 2003, and once with as many as 5,000 locations throughout the region), Bienvu, and Maghreb International Publicité (MIP). Meanwhile, smaller suppliers became specialized in specific areas, such as Vision Plus, which handles train and subway stations.
Algeria’s outdoor expansion, on the other hand, has been impeded by a lack of adequate urban planning. “In Algeria, each region has a law,” says Khiari. “Here you are allowed 10 meters, here 25… Each municipality, each department wants something different, because they are not at the same stage of development.”
But Decaux’s arrival will bring changes and unification, Khiari adds. “Because it makes a lot of money, [Decaux] can say, ‘I want this category and this law.’”
Lebanese supplier Pikasso’s subsidiary in Algeria, Lawhat, was established in 2005 and posted a $6 million turnover last year. It has been expanding its network by around 500 locations per year. Pikasso’s CEO, Antonio Vincenti, is convinced Algeria has enough potential to justify the expense of covering its 2.4 million square kilometers.

TENDER MOMENT. Conveniently, Lawhat was established just in time to bid in a tender for the right to sell Algiers’s outdoor locations, a turning point for the Algerian outdoor industry. Prior to this tender, and in the absence of any real urban planning strategy or allotment of outdoor ad spaces, chaos prevailed across the country. Karim Bellazoug, general manager of Euro RSCG Algeria, says, “Starting in 2002, some billboards appeared in complete anarchy. Whoever had available spaces rented them without any know-how.”
The first tender for handling outdoor advertising in the capital’s 57 districts over a ten-year period was organized by the Algiers municipality in 2005, inspired by the Casablanca and Tunis municipalities’ procedures. It marked the start of a more professionalized era, although it took 18 months to complete.
The three winners of the tender became Algeria’s most prominent players: Avenir Décoration, which has more than 8,900 square meters of ad surface in Algiers alone (making it the most prolific supplier in the capital), Al Pub and Lawhat. The latter is now the country’s largest operator at a national level, with 1,100 billboards in 30 towns (compared to 448 for Avenir Décoration and 252 for Al Pub) from a national total of 2,850 faces, on top of its 100-odd locations in Algiers.

CHANGING TERMS. Lawhat’s entry to the Algerian market offered advertisers an alternative to less efficient practices, according to its management. “We are specialized in national coverage, offering a 14-day formula at low prices. This has been quite a revolution for the Algerian outdoor ad industry, which wasn’t familiar with temporary campaigns,” says Vincenti. “Our competitors usually propose billboards by unit for a one- to 12-month period.”
The offering is taking a while to catch on, though. “Clients don’t understand the concept of weekly campaigns,” says Bellazoug. “They keep renting ad space for a year as if they were actually buying it, and campaigns remain limited to a maximum of 100 to 300 billboards, which isn’t enough to have real impact. Most don’t invest in massive marketing and still don’t understand that being seen in order to sell is more important than merely being seen.”
Suppliers in Algeria are expected to provide urban furniture in exchange for outdoor advertising contracts, an enforced sideline that can prevent them from focusing on their core competencies, say critics. For example, Avenir Décoration also manufactures public toilets, benches and bus shelters.
Despite vain attempts at policing the industry in Morocco and Algeria, the lack of transparency and regulation in the Maghreb’s outdoor market is often criticized. For example, in Morocco, FC Com – whose founder, Mohamed Mounir Majidi, is close to the royal family – was the focus of various lawsuits and controversies after winning the exclusive use of Casablanca’s public premises for 30 years. In the kingdom, the only law covering outdoor advertising is more than 60 years old. In 1976, though, another government decision gave municipalities the responsibility of attributing contracts under the government’s supervision.
But to date, nothing of the sort is happening, as municipalities are dealing in ad spaces on their own and often not getting paid for it. In 2007, $1.6 million of delayed payment for advertising on private properties led the Casablanca municipality to take down at least 140 posters. A new law has been in the works in Algeria and was supposed to be voted in a year ago. “Local operators haven’t even been consulted,” says Bellazoug.

WIND OF CHANGE.  The tremendous growth of the mobile phone business – and the boom of telecoms advertising that comes with it – should eventually lead the way to more modern practices, says Bellazoug, by showing that smart marketing and a strong brand identity are key to success. The sector is the region’s biggest spender on marketing, accounting for 40 to 60 percent of total ad expenditure. Other big-money clients are international FMCG companies seduced by the region’s growth rates, and a banking sector that is slowly coming to grasp how much it previously underestimated the need for advertising.
Algerian agencies are gradually adapting to this changing reality, prompted by the growing interest of international brands, and by the public’s generally good response to outdoor advertising. Rym Othmani, CEO of communication group MMC, says, “Due to strong competition from satellite free-to-air television, local stations’ audiences are plummeting and the Algerian press is often far too expensive. So an increasing number of clients are switching their budgets to outdoor which, as a new medium, attracts consumers’ attention for less cost in towns that haven’t yet been saturated by it.”
The impact of telecom growth has obviously been felt in Tunisia as well, where hugely successful mobile phone operators provide the bulk of outdoor revenues (around 40 percent), followed by the food industry and car dealers.
Although the Tunisian market is developing technically, it is unlikely to grow much more, instead becoming more monopolized as suppliers dig themselves in. “[Bienvu] is the only supplier that has a lot of products [in Tunisia],” says Khiari. “We have lamp posts, billboards, small panels, mupis, digital...”
In Algeria, by contrast, companies are specializing in areas of the country or in different outdoor media. Despite the industry’s ongoing changes, advertising in the Maghreb remains underdeveloped by international standards. Even in Morocco, advertising expenditure represented just over 0.6 percent of GDP in 2007, compared with 1 percent in Egypt and 1.5 to 2 percent in European countries. Many believe there is still room for growth.
No wonder, then, that the regional market is attracting big players such as French outdoor giant JCDecaux, which made its first serious incursion into Africa after winning the bid (at a rumored $15 million) for exclusive use of Algiers airport’s ad space in June 2008. The international airport specialist claimed at the time that Algiers would serve as a showcase for larger developments in the region. Whether smaller newcomers can make space in a region where first-come, first-serve is the dominant philosophy remains to be seen.

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