The IAB GCC held its General Assembly on 6 April 2022 in which it announced the new Board for the 2022-2024 period, comprising 15 different companies representing:

• Publishers/Sales Houses: Anghami, Augustus Media, Choueiri Group, MBC, MMP
• Agencies: GroupM, Havas, MCN, Omnicom Media Group, Publicis Media
• Technology Platforms: Amazon, Google, Meta, Snap, Twitter

In the first board meeting of their term on 21 April 2022, representatives of these companies re-elected Rayan Karaky as Chair of the Board and Michel Malkoun as Vice-Chair of the Board.

On his re-election, Rayan Karaky commented: “We live in unprecedented times, we are at 40-year high inflation, we are experiencing major geopolitical & economic shifts; we are in a very trying and defining year; what we do in the next two years and how we react to all these challenges is going to have a meaningful impact on our industry. The past two years have been setup years for the IAB in MENA, we have so much more to do together to drive growth and a sustainable, trustworthy industry be it on measurement & research, industry benchmarks & standards as well as diversity amongst other topics; I am appreciative for the trust of my peers and excited about continuing this journey with them”

Michel Malkoun said: “Over the past two years we have had the opportunity to put the building blocks in place. Our next two years working together will be to develop on top of that and create sustainable and repeatable initiatives to drive incremental positive impact in our industry. I am very humbled by our colleagues at the IAB for placing their trust in Rayan & myself to steer the IAB in what we as an industry were set to do”

Ian Manning, IAB GCC CEO added: “We have achieved a great deal over the past two years despite the obvious challenges and now we have the opportunity to accelerate our efforts. I’m thrilled to continue working with Rayan and Michel alongside the new board on driving growth for our industry by implementing initiatives that provide more trust and transparency across the ecosystem and help to attract and nurture talent in our market.”