“Over N170bn spent on Radio, TV adverts but 90% advertisers unaware if their advertisement was carried” – CCM Chief

In 2015, over N170bn was spent on media advertising, including Radio and Television in Nigeria. The level of media compliance – the proportion of advert spots carried and on time as planned – varies considerably from one station to the other and has been known to be as low as 35%. With many advertisers spending hundreds of millions of Naira per annum, a significant portion of their sales revenue on advertising, the need for media monitoring became compelling. The COO of the technology foremost operator in media monitoring in Nigeria, Compliance and Content Monitoring (CCM) Ltd, Bayo Odeyinde, spoke about the industry and how his company is setting the standard for transparency and accountability in media deliveries across over 260 Radio and TV stations apart from press and billboard advertising in Nigeria.

When you assess the media industry, what do you see?

The Nigeria media advertising industry which comprises of advertisers, full service advertising and specialist media agencies, media houses and media research and monitoring service providers is the largest and most complex and dynamic in Africa. It will become even more so in the coming years making media monitoring for compliance and intelligence reporting an increasingly critical requirement for all advertisers.

How would you define the business of media monitoring?

The business of media monitoring may be defined as the activities which are configured to deliver media monitoring reports principally of two types – media compliance and competitive intelligence – for the use of advertisers and their media agencies. Precisely because of the complexities imposed by the size, diversity and rapid changes in the media scene, from the get go, CCM deployed a unique and robust technology for monitoring electronic media – enabling 24/7 recording of transmission of 171 radio and 93 terrestrial television stations nationwide from 29 remote unmanned locations, scanning of 32 satellite channels, fingerprinting of advertising spots to a database and electronic detection of same to produce highly accurate and verifiable weekly compliance reports to advertisers and their agencies, reliably by 10am on Thursdays. In many respects, CCM has redefined the business of media monitoring in Nigeria.

What were the commercial reasons that gave rise to the industry?

Thank you very much for asking this question. Earlier on I talked about the compelling need for media monitoring and how it has become a critical requirement for all advertisers. Coming into this role with overall responsibility for the CCM business, I asked my Research and Analysis Unit to generate a report of all radio and television advertisers and their spend and was shocked to find that over 90% by number and 27% by value do not use media monitoring services.

On the other, hand we found for example that the national Radio and TV compliance rate for a leading brand in the Fruit Juice category in October2015 was as low as 38%; 62% either not carried at all or not carried as scheduled. Leveraging CCM superior coverage and technology and working closely with the advertiser and its agency, compliance rate for the banking brand has ramped to a current 90% and improving. At CCM we take the view that if you would not accept delivery of or pay for poor quality or incomplete delivery of raw materials, why would you pay for incomplete advertising? The compliance problem is serious and the marketing and financial implications obvious.

Are you therefore saying that there was no media monitoring before 20 years ago?

There has always been some effort at media monitoring initially by advertisers and then their agencies by physically listening or watching out for the adverts. Advertisers have been known to ask their sales and field staff to look out for regular advertising or a new campaign breaking. Not only was media coverage in this way 20 years ago a problem but the quality and verifiability of resulting anecdotal reports was called to question.

There were no verifiable records so resolution of disputes between advertisers and their agencies on the one hand the media houses on the other hand were impossible. With superior technology, CCM, not only keeps media recordings for 2 years but can execute an audio playback in the event of a dispute.

Could you throw more light on the tools deployed by CCM?

CCM is committed to the use of technology and its applications to master the complexities of Nigeria media to the benefit of its clients. Apart from the unique configuration of its recording, detection and business Intelligence technologies for electronic media advertising, CCM is making progress in monitoring of press and billboard advertising using imaging, mobile and GPS technologies. One of the most exciting capabilities of CCM detection technology is its ability to detect and flag all ‘unidentified duplicated’ audio files.

We fondly call this UNDUin house. With this, we are first to pick new adverts, alert our clients and update the Share of Spend and Share of Voice for our client brands. What actually do you monitor, the reach, whether the adverts were carried according to schedule or effectiveness of the campaigns in the media?

CCM reports on the time and place of adverts as carried on media channels covered by CCM. It shows or indicates quality of carriage torn hoardings or partial play of a TV spot advert. This may be described as the ‘Actual’. When this is mapped to the advertiser’s media plan and schedule (let’s call this the ‘Plan), what you have is a compliance report. This answers the question ‘whether the adverts were carried according to schedule’. The compliance report can be used to ‘make good’ missed spots or for verifications before payment for advertising. CCM is also capable of rendering different types of competitive intelligence reports. But none of this is ‘the reach’. The reach is a measure of what proportion of a particular brand’s target market was exposed to the advertising.  This kind of information comes from audience research as provided by Media Planning Services (MPS) Limited.

How are you different from media planning agencies that also monitor the adverts whether they are published or not?

Some media agencies monitor adverts but none of them has the infrastructure and logistics to undertake the monitoring of advertising campaigns across media channels and nationwide. At best they can watch out for campaign break on more accessible media like press and billboards in Lagos. In any case, most advertisers recognize the value of an independent service provider of media compliance reports. It is a little awkward for a media agency with commercial interest to plan, buy and control media to be the one to also provide compliance reports. In much the same way you do not ask your accountant to also be the auditor.

How would you say that advertisers have been accepting the media monitoring concept?

CCM is one of only 3 providers of media monitoring services in Nigeria and between us we have only about 100 advertisers as clients. Using the CCM UNDUs capability, we have uncovered over 2,000 advertisers and can confirm that over N170bn was spent on Radio and TV advertising (based on gross media rates) in 2015, but over 90% of advertisers do not know if their advertising was carried on time or at all simply because they do not use media monitoring services.

Your huge investment is to give clients more value, how much investment has CCM committed so far?

Beyond the initial acquisition cost of a controlling equity interest in CCM, we have invested over N200m in revamping its entire hardware and software infrastructure increasing its radio and TV station coverage from under 50 to the current 260+. That is the only way CCM could have satisfied and continues to satisfy the biggest and most demanding advertisers in Nigeria.

Your coming into the market was to obviate the shady deals in the media, then how would the same advertiser trust you?

We target progressive advertisers and their agencies – those who know and value advertising as a strategic tool for business building into the long term and share our values on transparency and accountability. These advertisers and their agencies recognize and trust CCM and even more when we complete our business process reengineering to a seamless operation that will further reduce manual intervention and the possibility of ‘mago-mago’ to the barest minimum.

Do you equally advice your clients on medium to use for campaigns?

No we do not. Advertising and media agencies advice their clients ‘on medium to use for media campaigns’. Their choice of radio and TV stations for media campaigns may however be influenced by CCM compliance reports Who are your clients as at today? CCM is in good company servicing advertisers like MTN, Reckitt Benckiser,First Bank, Chi Ltd etc.

So what do you list as challenges of this industry?

The biggest challenge is in getting the vast majority of advertisers to appreciate the importance and value of media monitoring in the Nigerian advertising environment where media compliance is the #1 issue. The other problems relate to operating inflation like for power and constraints like availability of bandwidth upcountry for streaming data.

In spite of the challenges, what prospects do you see?

The prospects for market growth are good and would be driven by determined FDIs who would be taking on entrenched MNCs for a share of the biggest market in Africa. That will increase the number of advertisers and advertising spend and the demand for media monitoring services.

How do you engage in print media monitoring?

Press monitoring is simpler and more straightforward – advertising and media agencies simply attach clippings of press adverts to their media invoices as evidence the advert were carried. You cannot beat that. But if the advertiser or their agencies want more – share of spend, competitive intelligence, content analysis – then CCM will come to the rescue.

Media monitoring ensures compliance, but it comes with additional cost on the client

The investment that the advertiser makes in subscribing to the CCM service must be viewed in the context of the value of accurate, verifiable and timely media compliance and competitive intelligence reports in realizing business building marketing objectives. In 2015, the investment our clients made on media monitoring ranged from 1% to 2.3% as a percentage of media spend (at gross media rates).

Don’t you think your investment cost would increase when digital migration with its associated effects begins?

The digitization of media broadcast in Nigeria would multiply the number of electronic channels and make monitoring even more compelling and challenging. This will require replacement of some of our equipments but we are ahead of the learning curve with an ongoing CCM media monitoring test run of the first couple of digital broadcasting stations in Jos, Nigeria.