1. Two (ad)ventures in 21st Century Digital Arabia
du Media Lab
Raghu Venkataraman
Chief Strategy & Investments Officer, du

2. Du and the Du Media Lab
 A place for du to develop new digital destinations for Arabia
 A team that is not from the world of telecom
 An exploration of open business models
 A place for Over the Top AND operators
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3. What do we think and what do we know?
 The internet is a place for new opportunities and fresh thinking
 The internet on the region is as much mobile as on the PC
 The offerings for the people of Arabia are limited
 We think there is room for new digital destinations in Arabia
 We think that some of them can and should be made here
– by the people of Arabia, for the people of Arabia, from the people of Arabia
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4. The first journey: An Arabian destination for
sports fans
arabia.eurosport.com
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5. Launched in Dec 2009 as a website, Eurosport Arabia offers coverage of global,
regional and local sports in Arabic and French to the MENA
Eurosport Arabia – what’s in it
 Bilingual
 Arabic
 French (for North Africa)
 Pan-Arab and National
 Editorial coverage for 19 countries
 A default pan-Arab home page
 12 dedicated national landing pages
 Edited by Arabs for Arabs
 Regional editorial team in Dubai
 Correspondents across the Middle-East
 Live Coverage of MENA and International Sports
 A comprehensive scoring coverage and a unique
live commentary
 All major leagues in Europe and MENA
 All International cups and championships
(AFC, CAN, WC,…)
 All ATP and WTA tennis tournaments
 All NBA basketball games
 Worldwide events such as the Olympics
 Minute-by-minute LIVE commenting
 All major football games
 Major tennis matches
 Formula 1 Grand Prix
 Worldwide events
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6. Fortune favors the brave when two nations are in conflict
1 million page views in a single day: Egypt vs Algeria, African Cup of Nations
1st Initiative: 2nd Initiative: 3rd Initiative:
Office competition Created an Facebook Fan Page Ad campaign on MSN Messenger
• 7 ideas to best advertise the
• Got 800 Fans • >120,000 click through
match
• Users created >1,000 comments and posts
• Became the most popular Facebook
fan page on the topic
• ESA posted >100 articles & comments
4th Initiative: 5th Initiative:
Arabic sport forum participation Press release
• 10,000 clicks from Kooora forums
6th Initiative: 7th Initiative: 8th Initiative:
Display advertising campaign Use of Twitter and influencers
Multiple SEM campaign
• >1.83 % click through rates • 4,300,000 impressions (in 2 days) • 50 tweets by influencers
(industry average 0.25%) • 21,000 clicks
• 0.5% Click-through rate
(Industry Average 0.25%)
• ESA Page Views on Jan 28: 1,039,773
• ESA Unique Visitors on Jan 28: 150,000
• Most visitors: Egypt
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7. One award - advertising campaigns
Dubai Lynx Awards
 „Sports Conquers life‟ campaign won a bronze award at the Dubai Lynx - Interactive
Campaign
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8. And then, the World Cup, the French Open, and the journey
began…
An audience split that reflects the
Audience since January demographics of the Arab World
2010
– 73 M Page Views
– 11.2 M Visits
– Over 500,000 unique
visitors every month
– Average time spent on
site per visit 15 Minutes
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9. Going mobile
30,000 iPhone users in 10 weeks sans marketing, a Blackberry app just launched, and a mobile
web destination m.eurosport.arabia.com
Confidential

10. 9
Where are we now?
 Monetization started from January 2010 – Mediaquest as media representative
 Monetizing a pan-Arab audience is a challenge - the MENA region has three distinct sub-
regions:
– GCC with Dubai as a hub;
– Levant with Cairo as a hub;
– North Africa with Casablanca as a hub.
 Mobile content services have strong appeal with consumers
but advertisers are not (yet) ready to leverage these audiences
– Advertisers still need to invest to communicate their value proposition across mobile
channels.
 We believe that we can offer brands the first Pan-Arab web and mobile audience in one
single platform
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11. The second journey
Online,virtual,social gaming for sport in Arabia
eosarabia.com
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12. Empire of Sports aims to be to sports gamers what World of
Warcraft is to fantasy gamers
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13. Empire of Sports consists of 3 interconnected virtual 3-D cities
Paris Virtual City
Arabia Virtual City London Virtual City
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14. … allows users from around the world to compete and share
their love of sports
Sports
Tennis Football – 11 on 11 online Skiing (Indoor, of course!)
Basketball Bobsleigh Track and Field
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15. The challenge: to be relevant, culturally appropriate and
exciting for the regional audience
• What are the major • How can we design the
languages used by the game to respect the
target audience? cultural norms in the
region while still allowing a
• How will this change over high level of interaction
Cultural
the next 5 years as more Language with non-MENA users?
Sensitivity
users come online?
• Will the same business
• Will type of architecture, model which will be
monuments, virtual Business applied in Europe work in
clothing etc will make Look and Feel Environment the MENA region?
game appropriate and and Enablers
exciting for the users? • How will we compensate
for the lack of certain
infrastructure and business
enablers?
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16. First decision - game-play in Arabic, English & French
Languages Used by Internet Users in MENA
Tunisia Syria
Lebanon
Morocco Iraq
WB & GS
Jordan
Kuwait
Bahrain
Algeria Libya
Qatar
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
UAE
Oman
Yemen
Arabic / English
English / Arabic
French
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17. Architecture
Developing the Arabian virtual city began with the concept designs
Arabian City Concept Designs
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18. Architecture
Design a modern city of Arabia
Paris Streets & Monuments Arabia Streets & Monuments

19. Cultural sensitivity
Dressing up at home and abroad
Europe for Europeans Europe for Digital Arabia
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20. Cultural identity
Creation of several styles of clothing for customization
Virtual Clothing for the MENA Region
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21. Enablers
Oh for a good CDN! And how do I collect money?
Distribution Payment
Online Distribution:
Physical Distribution:
• Retail Sales
• Magazine Inserts
• Bundling
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22. The result is a virtual city that captures the diversity and culture
of the MENA region and appeals to a broad range of users

23. Whats ahead?
Securing relevant partnerships for the region and audience building …
Sports Partnerships Brand Partnerships
Regional Brand Integration into
Regional Football
Tennis Game Play
Clubs and Leagues
Leagues
Branded
Virtual Goods
& Stores
Relevant
International In-game
Clubs and Banner
Leagues Advertising
Audience Building
Relevant in-
game Online
animation Exciting advertising Member get
competitions member
Physical
distribution of
game client
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24. … in addition to monetization through various means
Virtual Goods as a Method of Monetization
“Worldwide sales of virtual items are expected to reach $7 billion
by 2015 … thanks to FarmVille and a few other online games,
Zynga revenues are about $600 million annually.” Forbes
“IMVU, a 3D virtual world for teenagers, has announced they
are on a $40 million annualized revenue run rate …The
company monetizes its 50 million member userbase by selling
virtual goods” Socialtimes.com
“… expected revenue of $75 million this year Playfish shows how
advertising combined with virtual goods sales can mean
lucrative real world money …” mashable.com
“Microsoft's online game network Xbox Live has quietly
generated an estimated $625 million in virtual items sales,
surpassing its subscription revenues.” Forbes
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25. What do we think and know now?
 We think that good design pays off
 Audience building takes money – in the right places – constant
experimentation is needed to balance the marketing efforts
 Monetization is a journey that is best started right from the beginning – it
will be a long haul
 Mobile cannot be an afterthought – design with mobile in mind from
the beginning
 New features and innovations need to be launched in weeks, not
months!
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27. What next from the Media Lab?
WATCH THIS SPACE
and thanks for listening
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