Traditional media still on driving seat for marketing campaign – research

Practitioners and owners of traditional media (print and electronic media) can again heave a sigh of relief over suspected threat to the continued existence of the sector. Statistics available in the recently published Mediafacts indicates that advertisers still prefer the traditional media in driving their marketing campaigns.

A product of painstaking research and computation by MediaReach OMD, Mediafacts is well packaged in a single volume. What is more, Mediafacts is available to readers in the two most widely spoken foreign languages in the West Coast of Africa, English and French. The study spread the dragnet of its research beyond West African shores to Central African countries, including Cameroon, Congo DRC, among others.

It is believed that owing to sudden surge in the use of internet and social media platforms in recent times, advocates of the medium have consistently argued and gone ahead to predict the imminent death of traditional media as a platform for news and marketing campaigns. This has raised concerns among professionals, owners and investors in the traditional media who were initially gripped with fear over imminent loss of jobs, investment and/or capital.

However, media experts have also insisted that notwithstanding the astronomical explosion in the use of the internet and social media, traditional media will continue to hold its own as a veritable platform for marketing campaigns.

This assertion has been given vent by the findings contained in the current edition of Mediafacts under review. The study reveals that while traditional media grossed about 90 percent of advertisers spending in the preceding year, the internet and social media cornered a negligible single digit of the percentage.

This statistics also reflects in the penetration level of the various media platforms covered. According to 2012 Annual Media Penetrations Statistics (AMPS) recorded in the current edition of Mediafacts, radio and TV led the pack of the most used media vehicle with 84 percent and 77 percent penetration among the 131.4 million people sampled for the study, respectively. While internet platform took 18 percent of the study population; out-of-home advertising (outdoor/posters) maintains respectable popularity with 74 percent penetration power, as newspapers and magazines recorded 22 percent and 23 percent penetration, respectively.

The publication further broke down the total above-the-line (ATL) ad spend of 2012 to who-gets-what as follows. Of the N91.846 billion spent on ATL campaigns last year, TV campaigns gulped the lion share of a whopping N49.399 billion. Outdoor advertising and radio gained N17.692 billion and N15.782 billion of the sum, respectively. The print media (press) coveted the remaining N8.974 billion of the total ads spend in ATL campaigns.

The statistics shows that traditional media like radio and TV performed well last year. While TV dominated media spends of advertisers, accounting for 53.78 percent of the total expenditure of the year’s total ad spend of N91.846 billion, thereby increasing its share from 44.84 percent in 2011 to 53.78 percent in 2012, its radio counterpart increased its share of expenditure from 12.79 percent in 2011 to 17.18 per cent in 2012 under review.

However, in reverse order, the print media and out-of-house media recorded decrease in their shares of media spend. The expenditure share of the internet and social media were not ascertainable just as it happened in last year’s report.

As with last year’s report, the current Mediafacts does not reveal expenditure on online advertising for 2012. This is probably due to the fact that the internet and social media platforms are yet to be regulated, computed and organised in Nigeria.

In the face of stiff competition from new media platforms, the current Mediafacts report gives hope of survival to the traditional media, particularly radio and TV. If the sector continues to grab a chunk of the total ad spend as it has consistently done in the past years, traditional media will continue to be on the driving seat of marketing campaign.

Unlike TV, newspapers and magazine continue to experience lull in their earnings from the total ad spend. A marketing expert says this could be due to the pressure being mounted by the growing popularity of the new media and online platforms. Another analyst attributed it to non placement of huge advert volumes by advertisers to some print media, which are currently having challenges.

The yearly publication has again presented investors with tool to drive their marketing communication efforts. As with the previous editions, the current edition of Mediafacts presents the reader with empirical media trends and information on nine West African countries and three Central African countries where the publisher, MediaReach OMD operates. Other countries covered in the volume include: Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Cameroon, Benin Republic, and Nigeria.

The publisher, MediaReach OMD is a specialist media company that provides “expert, precise and media information based on stringent research methods and intelligent interpretation of facts….” Over the years, MediaReach continued to provide a host of media-related services to advertisers and or their representatives across West Africa and beyond. Mediafacts, one of its valued services has grown to become a key media resource for marketing professionals in countries MediaReach OMD operates.