Airtel subscribers experience 50m drop calls daily due to lack of credit

…Network offers relief window, discusses AI AdTalks

Airtel Nigeria has said that about 50 million calls daily on its network are not completed due to lack of credit by the customers or because of other reasons.

The network has therefore come up with an initiative to enable these customers to continue their calls. It is offering the customers the option of listening to an advert within their call time and they will be rewarded with another 60 seconds airtime.

The initiative by Airtel in conjunction with its partners – INTENT.AI and fonYou allows play of advertisement and the customer chooses whether to listen and thereafter continue their conversation for another one minute or to decline. They are rewarded if they say yes, says Anthony Shiner, Group Chief Commercial Officer of Airtel Africa at the launch of Airtel Ads in Lagos recently.

He said Airtel Ads which is first foray of the telco targeted at connecting consumers and advertisers in a seamless interaction with data-infused Artificially Intelligent generated information is to really help to connect specific customers together with advertisers.

“We have created different platforms and ways of targeting so that advertisers can track the performance of their campaigns and be sure that the people they are talking to are exactly the people they want to talk to, when and where they want to talk to them

“We are going in to advertisement space to reach consumers using our platforms and data. We are using our platform and privacy of customers is paramount and we are connecting customers and advertisers together”, he said.

Shiner said Airtel Africa in partnership with INTENT.AI and fonYou is taking a definitely slight approach of how advertising is usually run.

“Advertising is evolving, and shifts in data policies are presenting new challenges,” says Anthony Shiner. According to him, “Airtel Ads is a game-changer, offering a unified solution across data sets and reaching a precisely segmented audience, unrestricted by category or budget.”

Airtel Ads taps into Telco and Wallet data, targeting both the digitally engaged and those traditionally excluded from the digital realm in Africa, including 2G and feature phone users. This platform is designed for media agencies and businesses of all sizes, offering focused audience targeting using Airtel’s rich database of customer data and their spending behaviours, coupled with the state-of-the-art Intent.ai platform.

This is the first time this is introduced in any market globally because the sub-Saharan advertising market is still in early stage. There is no huge advertising spending happening relative to the size of the population. We are introducing this to deepen the market, he said .

“We understand the need for a platform that provides greater value and reaches the unreachable,” says Alexandr Yesayan, Co-Founder of Intent.ai. “Airtel Ads goes beyond traditional methods, providing a distinct advantage with Voice Reward Ads, reaching audiences who haven’t adapted to smartphones yet.”

The event also featured “AI AdTalks: Exploring AI in Digital Advertising” where speakers discussed topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence, Chat GPT, programmatic buying, and data science, to the evolution of mobile technology from 2G, 3G, 4G to the current 5G technology. These discussions highlighted the profound impact of these technologies on the advertising industry and consumers’ daily lives.