The optimistic assessment comes from the sixth annual WAN-Ifra Middle East Conference in Dubai, where more than 250 newspaper publishers, editors and other senior executives from the region gathered to discuss strategies for building their print and digital businesses. The two-day conference ended Wednesday.

While the subject of the conference was cross-media advertising, a real question was the market itself – one-third of the population is below the age of 14, and newspaper readership and internet penetration are both low.

But speaker after speaker – from Google, from the region's newspapers and from newspaper and media companies beyond the region – talked about the potential for growth.

Google's manager for emerging Arabia Abdulrahman Tarabzouni reported that there  are 63 million internet users in the region, but that represents only an 18 percent internet penetration rate: "This shows the huge gap and the growth potential that will hit very soon," he says.

The potential for growth is just as great for newspapers, according to Mohamed K. Alayyan, publisher and chairman of United Jordan Press.  "There is a great market opportunity for circulation revenues because the penetration is low," he said.

The question of the region's political tumult was also part of the discussions. WAN-Ifra chief executive Christopher Reiss says demonstrations in the Middle East illustrate the need for strong newspapers in the region: "We need newspapers that are free to provide credible, critical and timely information to the society."

Dhaen Shaheen, chief executive and editor-in-chief of ‘Al Bayan’ newspaper in Dubai, said demonstrations "have created a new situation in the media" and illustrate how technology allows for more open debate.

"We can see the new technology has created a virtual space, virtual parliaments and discussion platforms to express everything they want," he said. "The technology has changed the tools of communication, especially regarding the expression of points of view."

But until the potential growth in the digital arena is realised, its impact on political discourse will remain limited, despite the conventional wisdom to the contrary.

There are only 14,000 registered Twitter users in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen combined, compared with a population of 82 million, said Eamonn Byrne, founder and director of the UK-based Byrne Partnership, “and yet, if you look at the BBC, or Al Jazeera, you could be forgiven for thinking Twitter or Facebook are entirely responsible for the events of the last weeks," he said.

With infrastructure, content and advertising growing quickly, the media impact is expected soon. "We're on the verge of a very exciting tipping point," said Google’s Tarabzouni.

• WAN-Ifra report. Summaries of the presentations are at http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/middle-east-conference-summaries