The IAB MENA held its General Assembly on February 21 this year and announced the new Board for a two year term for the 2024-2026 period.
The new board consists of 14 companies from Agencies, Tech platforms and Publisher/Sales Houses.
- GroupM, Havas Middle East, MCN, Omnicom Media Group, Publicis Media Groupe
- Amazon, Bytedance, Google, Snap
- Backlite Media, Choueiri Group, MBC Group, Rotana Media Service, WGroup
In the first board meeting of their term, the new board representatives re-elected Michel Malkoun, Chief Growth Officer of Choueiri Group as Chair of the Board and elected Christos Solomi, Chief Digital Officer of Omnicom Media Group as Vice-Chair of the Board.
The board thanked Mohamad Itani, the outgoing Vice Chair due to a changed role within Amazon, for his support and dedication to the IAB during his term, who responded and said: “I want to congratulate Michel and Chris for their election and I’m confident that they will continue to drive the momentum the IAB has established over the past couple of years”
Michel Malkoun, said: “2023 was a bumper year for the IAB MENA in terms of outputs, impact and growth. This gives us a fantastic base on which to build and I’m excited that we will be able to accelerate our efforts to drive deeper, more localised knowledge and insights for our community, while giving our members more opportunity to lead initiatives.”
Christos Solomi, added: “2024 is likely to be a landmark year of change for the industry, in part due to cookie-deprecation, but I’m confident we can both prepare our region for the challenges to come and support the growth of new channels and opportunities.”
Ian Manning, IAB MENA Executive Director, commented: “The IAB MENA continues to go from strength to strength. This is testament to the members dedication and the board’s determination to make digital marketing in MENA world class. I’m thrilled to be working with Michel and Chris on delivering our vision and on driving growth opportunities for the region.”
At the General Assembly, the members of the association were given the opportunity to hear about the highlights of last year and share the next steps for 2024.
It includes guides, insights, events and reports from the 10 different task-forces made up of around 150 people from member companies, who collaborate together to find solutions to challenges, increase knowledge of specific channels and support the development of people in our industry.
