Lebanon might have the slowest Internet in the world, but the country is considered a trend setter in the region, and advertising experts from abroad are eager to tap into this nascent market.

“It’s not who you know, it’s what you know,” said Mothner, founder of Wpromote, a California-based search engine and marketing firm, playing on the old expression. Whereas in the past it was the opposite, today he says that customer research is the key to reaching the right audience and increasing revenue. “If I can understand who people are, that’s good,” he said.

Right now, 95 percent of the Middle East uses traditional media: television, radio, magazines and billboards. But this is expected to change – within the next year.

In Lebanon, at least 25 percent of the country’s youth use Facebook, showing that there’s already a platform for advertising on social networks. In spite of this, very few Lebanese companies advertise on the world’s most popular social networking website.

“We can’t wait for fast Internet,” said Mothner, noting that last year more mobile phones than computers were purchased worldwide, and consumers are increasingly logging onto Facebook through their smart phones.

Noting the importance of youth culture in targeted advertising, Mikko Kotila, founder of Statsit, a web analytics company based in Malaysia, said that younger audiences were less concerned about privacy, while the older generation was becoming more ignorant.

Another major change he’s found is that people are more likely to take recommendations from strangers than they were in the past, while half of those he’s surveyed say that online recommendations influence their decisions.

Mike Stone, vice president of sales and strategy at Wpromote, says Lebanon’s market is what the United States was six years ago, before companies tapped into online advertising. In Lebanon, the demand is higher than the supply, with more people doing online searches than there are companies promoting themselves on the Internet.

Last year, 1 percent of advertising in the Middle East and North Africa was online. This is expected to increase to 4 percent in the next three years.

Stone sees enormous potential in targeted online advertising in Lebanon – where companies will soon send ads to people based on their age, gender, hobbies and interests, just as the U.S. has been doing for the past five years.

“It’s scary. I didn’t like it at first because of the privacy issue,” admits Stone. “But it’s great from a marketing perspective.”