Jordan’s advertising sector has recorded its best ever year, driven in part by competition in the booming telecommunications sector.

In 2006, $215m was spent on advertising, a 33% rise on the previous year’s figure of $162m. While, in regional terms, Jordan’s advertising industry is still a relatively small player, accounting for just 3% of the Middle East’s total expenditure, it has registered strong growth for all but one of the past six years and has expanded to embrace all mediums.

The largest single advertiser in Jordan last year was the telecommunications sector, which spent $31.4m to promote its services to the public. With four mobile phone companies now operating in the tight Jordanian market, competition is fierce and an appealing advertising campaign can be crucial to attracting new customers and wooing others away from rivals.

According to Mustapha Tabba, the newly appointed president of the Jordanian chapter of the International Advertising Association, the battle between the big three telecommunications companies, Fastlink, MobileCom and Umniah, has been a prime factor in boosting advertising expenditure.

Other big spenders in advertising last year were the banking and finance sector, which contributed $23m, the service industry, which spent $18.7m and the entertainment and leisure sector, which accounted for $16.8m.

“The marketing and communications industry is now widely considered to be one of the key sectors driving economic growth in the country and the region as a whole,” said Tabba. “For Jordan and our industry, the future looks very bright. We expect 2007 to carry on the same trend of high growth levels.”

In the past, the sector had come under fire for the low quality of many of its products, both in the levels of creativity and technical standards. However, the situation is changing.

The rapid development of Jordan’s information and technology industry, strongly promoted by the government, has found skilled designers coming up through the ranks to provide the technical know-how to turn the creative concepts of writers into reality.

Increased exposure to regional and international production standards, combined with the entry into the Jordanian advertising sector of some of the heavyweights of the global industry, including Saatchi & Saatchi, Young & Rubicam, BBDO and Ogilvy & Mather, has seen a lifting of quality.

Another factor is client demand for better advertisements, along with vastly increased budgets being made available to agencies.

According to Sharif Abukhadra, chairman of The Holding Group, which includes one of the country’s leading advertising agencies, TEAM Young & Rubicam, the industry is reaching new heights.

“The standard of creativity continues to rise in Jordan,” he said after TEAM Young & Rubicam took the top two prizes in the Jordan section of the international Pikasso d'Or Awards, presented on February 12.

Currently, daily newspapers draw the lion’s share of advertising expenditure, 77% of the national total, with weeklies, television, billboards, radio and monthly magazines combining to split the remainder.

However, television’s slice of the pie is predicted to increase with the opening up of the market to private operators, while the long-favoured outdoor advertising segment is expected to take a hit after the Amman municipality passed new regulations to reduce the placing of billboards on buildings in the capital.

Under the new regulations, announced at the end of January, many of the billboards that now adorn Amman’s buildings will have to be removed by March.

“The goal of the new regulations is to give Amman a cleaner look by removing the hundreds of signs all over buildings,” Ali Hadedi, the director of the municipality’s advertising department said in a recent interview with the local press.

Outdoor advertising comprises only a small percentage of total expenditures and, in any case, analysts believe most of the money spent on billboards will be redirected to other forms of promotion.