Is Advertising in the UAE on a Par with Europe?

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
Talking performance marketing next at Mira Business FM, and just how fast that it's changing. Brands are under pressure to prove growth, not just promise growth, and that's pushing a shift towards more integrated, more measurable, more data-led approaches. Now, the global performance marketing group Heroiks, with a K, just announced Dubai as their Middle East growth office, adding to a footprint in Paris, in Berlin, in Bangkok. Anthony Ravau is the founder and president. He has certainly a front-row view of how performance models are evolving across Europe, and now the Middle East, and also what that means for brands, navigating a more complex, more omni-channel world, I think the phrase is. Anthony, welcome. Nice to have you with us.

**Anthony Ravau** (0:52)
Good morning.

**Tim Elliott** (0:54)
You've just announced Dubai as Heroiks Middle East growth hub. So let's start there. What is it about this region, specifically this city, this emirate? What's strategically different at the moment?

**Anthony Ravau** (1:08)
Well, first, we decided to open this office because we met with Hicham Wajah, which was a super specialist in advertising, who has been working in the region for 15 years now within WPP, one of the world leaders in advertising. So the first reason we decided to open this office was the encounter with a true entrepreneur who wanted to back up with an agile model, which is Heroiks. Heroiks is the largest independent player in France when it comes to advertising. We describe us as a platform, integrated platform covering marketing, digital, media buying, consulting and content.
So, the first reason was definitely the encounter with an entrepreneur, a true specialist with a strong experience when it comes to performance, marketing. And the second reason is definitely Dubai is a fantastic hub towards Asia, Europe, Africa. The growth here is 20% on digital year on year. It's a fantastic place to innovate. It's a fantastic place to pitch. There is a great need for new players, which are really accountable in terms of measurement. And that's basically the reason why we are here.

**Tim Elliott** (2:51)
Okay. So, from a European perspective, you know, outside looking in, what similarities, also what differences are you seeing in how advertisers, I guess, approach performance?

**Anthony Ravau** (3:05)
Well, the thing is that we are shifting from a model where advertisers, and it's the same all over the world, we're looking for visibility. And traditional agencies were buying visibilities. And now, we are capable of measuring things, of being more accountable of things. And also to have some experts, and strategists, who are able to really see the whole means in a very integrated way. So content, media buying, performance marketing, I mean, everything is completely linked now. The need for content is absolutely enormous. The obsolescence of content right now is crazy. I mean, on the platforms, because of social consumption, you need to change content on a very often way.
And the reason for that is that algorithm have changed it very recently. Like when you take meta, now they have a new algorithm, which will push actually the refreshness of content. So there's a huge need when it comes to digital for refreshness of content. So you cannot like say, okay, I'm going to take a content agency, I'm going to take a marketing agency, I'm going to take an offline agency, and I'm going to have those guys talk to each other, and I'm going to ask them to do a strategy in silos. This is quickly over. I mean, you need to have a very integrated partner who can actually cover all those aspects. Otherwise, you lose in terms of measurements, you lose in terms of accountability, and you lose, of course, in terms of performance.

**Tim Elliott** (5:15)
When advertisers talk about tightening budgets, and I think that is reasonable to say that we're seeing that at the moment, what does good performance look like as we head further into 2026?

**Anthony Ravau** (5:29)
Well, the good performance has always been the same. I mean, the KPI has always been the same. I come from, I was a customers acquisition director in telecommunication business before I founded my company.
And my obsession was to really reduce cost of acquisition. And I think that as I was acquiring clients through websites and through call centers, it was easy to measure. And at that time, not everybody, not the retailers, not traditional brands were able to actually measure things. Now it's through the web, through different methodology, through different tools, we can definitely measure everything and measure the performance and test and learn and change and be extremely agile to really have the best cost of acquisition, basically. I mean, the obsession is just the common thing now about cost of acquisition. I mean, performance is definitely real, but you need to have the right sparing partner to deliver performance, and you need to have the right expertise and the agility to do that. But it's not so much about how many staff you have. It's the expertise which is absolutely crucial.