Ad spend on digital marketing is reversing- Oti Ukubeyinje
By Oghale Mafuru
The President of the Association of Digital Marketing Professionals, ADMARP and Vice President, Product Marketing and Growth, Terragon Group, Oti Ukubeyinje has revealed that the advertising spend on digital marketing is rapidly shifting downwards as a result of ease of COVID-19 restrictions and the inaccessibility to smart devices and internet.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, the iconic digital marketer while affirming that digital marketing is driven by the proliferation of digital devices stated that digital marketing in Nigeria has not witnessed the much expected accelerated growth as access to smart devices and internet penetration has adversely affected its level of adoption.
“Where more people use digital devices, it means there are more consumers to access digitally. That part goes hand in hand. So we are sort of limited by the penetration of the internet and smart devices and fully capable digital devices on one hand”.
The digital marketing guru asserting that movement to digital advertising was necessitated by the impact of the pandemic noted that marketers are seeking veritable means to physically engage with prospects for instant feedback.
In his words: “You would have thought it will stick right but it is reversing. It was almost as though the budget shift we saw was because offline advertising budgets are unused so they have to shift it to digital. It does not mean that there was a massive explosion in digital adoption. It didn’t go at par with the investment itself. What just happened is this money is here if we were going to spend only 5% of it on digital before, let’s spend 20% because we don t have billboards”.
“Having spoken to some brand guys, they are excited that the world has opened up again so they can now continue with the experiential activities that produce instant results. So people are shifting money back. I spoke to our mobile phone guy when we had our prediction at ADMARP prediction this year. One or two people said yes, we are in the physical device industry, it is easier to sell that thing physically when you activate than purely digital because e-commerce is just evolving”, he added.
According to him, investment is shifting back to offline advertising which poses a huge setback for the digital space, and though people spend more time on digital platforms, the numbers of users have not increased considerably as the cost of digitally enabled devices and data subscriptions have not witnessed a decrease.
“People are spending more time on screens right now than before because of the incidence of hybrid working and other things. It doesn’t necessarily mean that suddenly the number of people on digital has exploded. However, time spent on screens has increased so it does look like the consumption is increasing. But if you look at the economics of it, the adoption is not growing significantly fast. Why? It is because the cost of data has not dramatically dropped, the cost of devices has not dramatically dropped. So, the disposable income of purchasing these devices has not suddenly become available. So, internet penetration is not moving as fast as we would have expected and that is limiting the growth of digital marketing as a whole.” He said
While expressing hopes that the broadband expansion project of the Federal Government which will enable telecom companies to reach more areas with the 3G network will impact significantly on digital adoption and penetration, Ukubehinje urged digital marketers to think creatively to navigate the new challenge of data measurement caused by the eroded cookies amongst others
“We need to think digital not from the perspectives of just social media or the internet but the other channels like mobile offline, SMS that require a bit of a screen”.
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