Media industry latest report has shown that advertising spend in most traditional media categories dropped from N88 billion in 2017 to N81 last year. In the last three years, total advertising spend for traditional media including TV, radio, press and outdoor, called Above- the-Line; has been declining. In 2015, it stood at N98 billion, it dropped to N91 in 2016 then to N88 billion in 2017.
The report, Media Facts, published by mediaReach OMD, shows that TV, radio and Outdoor suffered declines while press had increase in advertising spend. In the previous years, press had also recorded decline.
Spend on TV declined from N33.5 billion to N29.4 billion, radio suffered decline from N12.4 billion to N10.1 billion and spend on Outdoor dropped from N24.6 billion to N20.7 billion. Press enjoyed increase in spend from N17.6 billion to N20.8 billion. The increase on advertising spend for press could be that the politicians leveraged the press the more for political campaigns in the past elections.
From the report, a total of N34 billion spend, accounting for 43 % was spent by advertisers in Lagos alone; while a total of N9.4 billion was spent in South South region. N9.9 billion was spent in North Central; North West N8.8 billion; South West N8.1; while a total of N6.7 billion was spent by advertisers in South East. The advertisers spent N3.2 billion to capture North Eastern market.
Interestingly, the nation’s telecommunications sector still remains a top spender in the ATL category, with MTN, Airtel topping the list of the top 20 advertisers for the year, with Ad spends of N7billion and N3.6billion, respectively, constituting 13 percent of the total ad spend in the category. Banking and Finance sector spent N6.5 billion, Soft drinks category spent N2.6 billion while ‘Others’ where political adverts could have been categorised spent N29.2 billion accounting for 36 percent of the total N81 billion.
The annual report tracks above the line advertising spend.
Daniel Obi
