Online advertising has been one of the few areas of growth in the Arab media market.
Despite representing just a fraction of the region's $4 billion ad industry, digital advertising has been growing steadily, bucking the trend in a market hit hard by the financial downturn.
Commentators estimate that the total online ad market in the Arab world was worth between $160 million and $175 million last year, although there are no independent measures of this.
That is set to increase by a further 15 to 20 per cent this year, according to Ahmed Nassef, the vice president and managing director of Yahoo Middle East.
"Based on what we're seeing, I think we're going to end the year as an industry with probably a 15 to 20 per cent growth," he said.
Mr Nassef said that this forecast depends on a stable environment, after a tough start to 2012 for the industry as a whole.
"In the first quarter, it was a very difficult time. We were actually impacted here by... the financial crisis, and what was going on in Europe and the US," he said.
However, Mr Nassef said he expects the Arab world's online-ad industry to pick up in the second quarter, following the gloomier performance in the first three months of the year.
Mr Nassef said the online ad industry grew by 10 to 15 per cent last year, and claimed that Yahoo Middle East's ad revenues increased by 30 per cent in 2011.
"My goal is to always grow at double the organic market growth," he said.
Mr Nassef said Yahoo is exploring content partnerships with Arab media companies, although he declined to name the firms he is in discussion with.
"We're hoping to announce some big ones in the next few months," he said. "We're focusing on a lot of the big TV and print publishers"