Advertising and marketing are two fundamental requirements for any business. Most successful ones use newspaper advertising because it can reach a large portion of the population — in the case of Saudi Arabia, literally millions of people. So far neither satellite broadcasting nor the Internet has the same effective reach.

Of course, the market is changing. No one can afford to be complacent; the professionals in both the advertising and marketing industries will use every avenue and every ingenious opportunity to promote their clients’ products. They are the guiding spirit of any promotion; they determine and advise which medium should be used for a specific purpose. But for the moment their first choice is still, as it has always been, the newspaper. That is crucial to the printed media industry. A newspaper can get its bread from circulation, but its butter has to come from advertising revenue. And this is a case where butter is life-giving. Quite simply, a newspaper depends on selling space to become a commercially viable entity. Without sufficient advertising revenue, a publication is doomed unless subsidized from other sources. That presents a challenge.

Advertising and marketing are now highly specialized fields. Both are a pervasive feature of daily lives of all of us — and in trying to gain our attention organizations spend billions of riyals in the Kingdom alone. To be part of that, newspapers have to be attractive to the advertisers — and to be attractive means hitting the right markets and having a solid circulation. It can be a Catch-22 situation. Without sufficient circulation, there will not be the adverts; without the adverts there will not be the income; without the advertising income, there is no chance of investing in the paper and expanding coverage to pull in the readers; so it goes on.

That has not been Arab News’ fate. From the very start, it has been the first choice of all corporate, classified and private advertisers in the Kingdom. Advertising and marketing executives term the Middle East’s leading English-language daily as a success story. They do so for various reasons.

One, it enjoys wide readership not only across the Kingdom but also in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East. So the message that the newspaper advert carries has wide appeal.

Two, response from readers is near instantaneous. A single classified or display advertisement, however small, catches the attention of the reader; his or her response is rapid. Advertisers say their classifieds and display adverts in Arab News have had tremendous results. Those promoting supermarkets or consumer items readily vouch for this. “Insert one advert in Arab News and see the people flocking to the supermarket,” says Muhammad Abdul Karim, a senior Panda executive.

Arab News’ pre-eminent position as an advertising niche performer in the Kingdom has been demonstrable for these past 30 years — and that is not Arab News’ view, it is the view of advertisers and advertising and marketing firms. Their first preference has remained Arab News. No other English newspaper in Saudi Arabia has attracted anything like the kind of corporate and commercial advertising that this paper gets or publishes. And this, despite its space selling rates being the highest in this part of the world, says Riaz Mulla, a veteran advertising executive and general manager of Jeddah-based Ateico Communications.

When it comes to launching new products, promoting existing products, or even marketing products and services, Arab News has again been the obvious choice.

This is because newspaper advertising is often a double-edged sword, explains Faisal Bushnak, managing director of Bushnak Group. “It can provide you with exposure and leads with an overwhelming response rate.”

Advertising and marketing executives say that on many occasions, especially when they have launched new products and services or campaigns, they have found the print media, especially Arab News, more responsive in comparison to other advertising mediums including direct mail or broadcast advertising.

Arab News thus has an enviable record when it comes to advertising. Its advertisement content has been up year on year. Even in the first issue in the tabloid form that was published 30 years ago, it carried major advertisements. Since then its advertising graph has soared, barring periods of economic slowdown which affected the entire advertising business like many other businesses.

This particularly strong growth in Arab News advertising reflects the extremely buoyant local retail markets, says Shahid Haider, regional account director, TEAM Young & Rubicam.

Needless to say, the print media in general has been complaining that TV broadcasts and satellite channels have taken away a portion of their advertising business. Indeed, in the case of some newspapers they have taken away a large chunk of it. But that is not so with Arab News, which stands as one of the shining examples in the print media. There might have been ups and downs due to the fluctuating economic situations, but on the whole the overall revenue of Arab News from advertising has remained steady in bad times and increased in good times.

There is no reason to believe this pattern will change in the immediate future.

(Senior Reporter K.S. Ramkumar specializes in business and travel writing.)