Digital advertising: The way forward

Taking recent statistics into consideration, there are about 500 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, up from 246 million in 2008, with the four biggest markets being Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana.

According to Facebook statistics tracker Socialbakers, there were around 10.5 million Facebook users in Africa in 2010. Mobile broadband subscribers in Africa users of data cards and USB devices via cellular 3G networks crossed 3 million in September 2009 and were expected to break the 4 million milestone in the first quarter of 2010. In total, 4.54 terabytes of cable capacity is available across 13 submarine cables in Africa. www.mannastores.com

These will further grow to 24.5 terabytes by 2011, according to Africa Analysis. ((Mobile Monday report) 70% of the people in the world now have a mobile phone, children are more likely to own a mobile phone than a book, as 85% of them have a mobile phone in comparison to 75% having a book at home.

Definitely mobileAll these statistics and facts points towards one issue: the future is definitely mobile. It is a fact that most internet mobile phone users use their phone 75% of the time for data and not voice. This is a main reason for advertisers to move their advertising platform to mobile, which is a core form of the digital advertising platform. For most advertisers, it is the method of measuring the impressions per views that is of great concern. 

How do one measure the ads that are placed on a mobile phone, taking into consideration the different challenges to network connectivity and accessibility that plagues an environment as Nigeria?

This led InMobi, the world's largest independent mobile advertising network, to put together a mobile advertising network for a forum for stakeholders in the advertising industry across Africa. The forum took place in the cities of Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Cape Town. The main purpose is to educate advertisers, agencies, operators, publishers and developers within the ecosystem on the importance of mobile advertisement.

The advertiser's perspective

For most of the advertisers, it is the issue of using Cost per Mille (CPM) for payment formats while some will prefer it to be measured in Cost per Click (CPC). For some, it is the mode of payments through InMobi that is so stressful. Nigeria has the challenge of paying online for business transactions and for some, it is the technicalities of the InMobi website feature. Maneuvering their ways around it tends to be difficult for some.
Francis Ebuehi, Regional Manager Dealfish, Nigeria and Ghana gave a presentation on how using InMobi has helped his business. He gave a comparison of InMobi with two other advertising platforms and the difference is very glaring.

The Mobile need-to-know

Isis Nyong'o, the Vice President and Managing Director , Africa for InMobi and her team did educate the audience on different areas of mobile advertisement and the growing global trends. 
Teemu Kiiijarvi, EDX Lead, Nokia West Africa talked about the growing trends on the Nokia brand.. The growing popularity of smartphones and the need for applications to be developed for such phones was the main reason that led to the building of the Nokia app store known as ‘Ovi Store'.

He also explained that Nokia plans to help the ecosystem develop by supporting all forms of programs that will aid the growth of the ecosystem. "This can be seen in the developers training where about 80 developers were trained in a 3-day training workshop organized by Nokia both here in Lagos and Accra in Ghana," he said. "This was a very successful event and that is what we need to do. We need to upscale the developers in the region by giving them more understanding of what they can do with our tools and our platforms, not only from the technology point of view but from the business point of view as well to utilize the Ovi store better and get exposure for your applications," he concluded.

One of the core things that were pointed out was the need for developers and advertisers integration to build the ecosystem. Ms Nyong'o pointed out certain examples of the developers communities that InMobi has worked with in different countries. Most especially in Kenya is the iHub case study and the Co-creation Hub that just emerged in Nigeria.

Challenges and solutionsMs Nyong'o noted that one of the main challenges of the mobile advertising market in Nigeria is the one of education of the opportunities that exists in mobile advertisement for advertisers. "Many of them might do SMS advertising in general sense and might not be aware of other types of mobile advertisements. It's likely there is a general awareness problem about seeing this opportunity and working with engaging with advertisers. It is a general issue with any industry and any new form of advertising formats," she noted.
"Another form of challenge is that of the network challenges here. It doesn't constraint us from showing the type of adverts that we show now, which are mainly banner and text ads, what it does means is that it's harder to show rich media video ads and from an advertisers perspective, those are the more interesting ads. This means it might take a little bit longer for us to be able to show those kinds of ads," expatiating further on the challenges faced. Not to be forgotten is the fact that there is not enough mobile publishing sites in Nigeria, as Kenya as a market is a lot ahead in that aspect.

InMobi is looking at different ways to live up to the tagline of being the most independent advertising network through the recent investment of Corpbank in InMobi. This is to facilitate the Smartpay which will help facilitate payments from different clients across the globe. The Smartpay is currently being beta tested and South Africa is one of the markets where it is being tested.

"In a broader scheme of things InMobi is a mobile internet company and it is moving into a broader scheme of things and the mobile payment is what helps in the advertising payment issue but it is a stand alone," commented Ms Nyong'o on the SmartPay system.

On part of what InMobi is doing to educate the awareness more on the needed relationships to build the mobile advertsing space, Ms Nyong'o explained that the workshop is an example. " I think that it is in small forums that you can really get to talk to people, it is not that scalable but it is more impactful so you can actually engage with the right set of people and really have dialogue is reflective of what is happening in the market and what other people are thinking about. I think workshops are a very effective way of doing this and it is one of the key things that we are doing."

"Also is the engagement with developers in a different format on how they can monetize their apps. You can find all these information online but when you sit in a forum you start getting re-awakened and it brings it much more to life. So that is what we are going to continue on and also finding other scalable ways of education and that is where the mobile markets association comes into play as that is one of the things they want to achieve with their members, which is how do we get the market more aware?, and we do participate in lots of conferences as well."

On the sustainability of the workshops and other scalable methods of engaging the mobile marketing ecosystem, Ms Nyong'o has this to say. "We are really committed to the African market as a whole and Nigeria is one of our big markets and we are really excited for the potential of this market and that is why we are investing our time and resources here. Nigeria is 25% of the continent , it is about we spending the time here, engaging in the right relationships and really grow from it as it's a long time perspective"