Nigeria’s $140 million worth OOH business under threat amid Covid-19 pandemic
The global Covid-19 pandemic has stalled the growth of Nigeria’s Out-of-Home (OOH) business worth about $140 million in 2019. The growth rate, which stood at 4.5% CAGR for OOH marketing and 20.7% CAGR for Digital OOH pre-pandemic, has come to a sudden stop.
The information was revealed by President of Media Independent Advertising Practitioners (MIPAN), Mr. Femi Adelusi in his goodwill message during the recent OOH Annual General Meeting (AGM) held virtually.
Speaking at the event themed “OOH Business and Emerging Realities”, Adelusi, who is also the Managing Director of Brand Eye Media, said the industry growth came to a “screeching halt” during the lockdown, especially in Lagos which accounts for over 60% of OOH ad spend.
According to Adelusi, the devastation has led to advertisers “slashing or pulling budgets, cancelling or reducing campaign scale, diverting billions to other platforms and forcing media owners to review their media business model”s.
“While almost all of the Digital LEDs are shut down, majority of the static boards also remained blank or running campaigns pro bono as a result of low patronage by clients who are investing in new route to market, invigorating logistics/distribution, commercialistion, exploring new media tech/digital platforms and thus deprioritizing advertising via traditional channels,” Adelusi said.
While expressing confidence in industry recovery fueled by “opportunity that technology and innovation and consumer dynamism and resilience of Nigeria OOH practitioners” to overcome the tough economic realities, Adelusi urged OAAN members to, among other things, use the opportunity of the pandemic to build capacity, adopt new technology, relook value creation as well as restructure formats of OOH and indoor packages to attract users to the platforms.
This was even as Starcom Media Perspectives Managing Director, Mr. Jude Odia, harped on the need to take collaborative effort to promote the relevance of out-of-home to the marketing communications space.
Odia urged advertisers under the aegis of ADVAN to optimize outdoor spend and usage in “reaching consumers and ultimately delivering ROI for businesses.”
He advised IMC practitioners to learn and unlearn in order to adapt to ever evolving consumer needs and marketing dynamics.
“We need to immerse ourselves in these realities and use it to develop new ways of doing things and connecting with the consumer to ensure we help clients and businesses deliver on business objectives.”
He commended the federal government’s move to constitute a committee for media measurement, noting that such measure would deliver global best practice to media rates and pricing regime across the board.
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