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Al-Jazirah rolls out innovative solutions for print ads

Al-Jazirah rolls out innovative solutions for print ads

by Brian Veseling brian.veseling@wan-ifra.org | August 1, 2016

In a recent email interview, Abeer Abdalla, PR and Business Development at Al-Jazirah for Press, Printing, and Publishing, Riyadh, told us about the rollout of possibilities and gave some examples of how they can be used.

“We are introducing the new printing innovative ideas in two phases,” she said.

Phase 1 are Scented Ads, Double Gatefold, and Special Colour.

Phase 2 includes Die-cut, Perforation, and Adversticker – advertising decal.

“Because the greatest connection to memory is scent, ‘scent-selling,’ allows advertisers to connect all five senses to a product campaign,” Abdallah said. “For example, these can include a ‘Rub to Experience,’ where an icon is placed on the ad to identify the unique interactivity.”

For example, she said, “a campaign advertising a new lemon-scented dish soap might utilize a photograph or graphic with ‘lemons,’ or a ‘fresh garden.’ The reader may ‘rub-to-experience’ the scent and instantly correlate the scent to the product.”

WAN-IFRA: When did you begin offering these kinds of unique advertising possibilities, and how did some of these offerings come about?

Abeer Abdalla: With the newspaper industry in decline, Al-Jazirah sought innovative ways to diversify advertising revenue. Recognizing the current needs in the market, locally, regionally and globally, Al-Jazirah created J-i6 to bridge the gap between print and digital storytelling.

Although many of these technologies are not unique to the printing industry, never before have multiple added-values been utilized in a daily print publication anywhere in MENA (Middle East / North Africa). Al-Jazirah started offering Phase 1 of the new printing innovative ideas in April 2016 with its clients.

In general, how popular are these innovative ads with advertisers?

The popularity of the innovations came out of our unique marketing plan. Al-Jazirah created the “J-i6 Innovations Roadshow,” to premiere the added-values to advertisers more than 18 months before they would be available in the market. This sneak-peak served two main goals. The first-look opportunity gave advertisers the ability to create campaigns with the innovations in mind, and also served to include the advertisers on the ground-floor of their development. The advertisers’ unique insight and feedback corresponded to which innovations were included in which phases, as well as how the technology would be customized to better serve their clients.

Do you have any internal rules about how often such advertisements can run? If so, can you share a few of them?

We are capable to run all but we are keen not to accept more than one operation in the same issue to keep our readers focused and to increase penetration for the advertiser.

What kinds of responses do you get from readers regarding innovative ads? Do they like them?

We saw a great deal of enthusiasm and interaction.


Abeer Abdalla will present more about these ideas at ”The Power of Print Innovation” session of Print World 2016 in Vienna, 10 October in the morning session (11:30 – 13:00), alongside the World Publishing Expo 2016.

She is one of Al-Jazirah’s Brand Ambassadors for its creative printing solutions, which is described as ”the passionate next-level in storytelling, inspiring the newspaper’s print industry,” at the same time bridging and creating harmony between the print and electronic media in the digital age.

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