Leveraging smart data and innovation in outdoor advertising in Nigeria

Smart data would be the new frontier for navigating the marketing mix, also known as the four Ps of marketing – product, price, promotion, place – to help organisations make strategic decisions.

The ramping up of infrastructure investment is a boon to the out-ofhome (OOH) advertising or outdoor advertising industry in Nigeria. The upgraded airport terminals, newly constructed train stations and bus terminals, the proliferation of shopping malls, rehabilitated roads, among other infrastructure projects represent outdoor advertising opportunities. Moreover, apart from simply increasing the inventory of OOH portfolios, investment in the outdoor advertising sector would help to boost the country's economy.

Outdoor advertising, one of the oldest forms of advertising, is a vital marketing communication tool. As a medium for reaching consumers throughout the day as they commute to work, shop or embark on other activities, the purpose of OOH is to create brand awareness and brand recall. Technology developments such as programmatic marketing (PM), an automated process of executing advertising transactions; as well as virtual and augmented realities – emergent technologies that use personalised approaches to marketing – are helping to drive efficiencies in advertising spend.

Remaining relevant and competitive in the dynamic technology-driven environment requires all forward-thinking practitioners to adopt new skills and be able to give value to their clients. We are in a period when data utilization has become very important in advertising. For instance, for target marketing to be effective, data is required on the buying habits of individuals in order to show them images of new products at different times and help them to make the right choices. In the same way, digital signage, such as LCD and LED, can be combined with augmented reality – a technology that layers digital information over what people see in the real world – to target a particular demographic to boost sales.

Big data is relevant to support spending across the communications value chain. However, big data can become smart data by qualitatively analysing data to create opportunities. In other words, smart data is about creatively analysing the quantitative and qualitative aspects of data together. Therefore, advertising practitioners need the requisite skill set to not only generate – but also report – the information that would support appropriate rate determination and investment decisions.

Recently, Gems Communications, an outdoor advertising agency, introduced traffic data measurement when the company mounted a traffic data measurement device on one of its digital billboards along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Since the expressway is a major artery in the nation's road network, the OOH agency should be able to appropriately determine its rates based on traffic count and other relevant metrics.

Today, when driving along highways in the Lagos metropolis, it is not unusual to see mounted cameras on billboards. It is assumed the cameras are recording traffic data, which would be analyzed to enable advertisers and media agencies to make informed decisions with respect to buying OOH.

The rate of adoption may seem slow in the Nigerian market, but the future of outdoor advertising will be data-driven. Hence, smart data would be the new frontier for navigating the marketing mix, also known as the four Ps of marketing – product, price, promotion, place – to help organisations make strategic decisions.

Although the advent of LED billboards in Nigeria completely changed the outdoor advertising landscape, the utilisation of digital billboards by advertisers in recent times has tapered. This slowdown is uncorrelated with the current economic recession. Unlike the static billboards, LED signage is associated with huge capital outlays, particularly due to the epileptic power condition in the nation. But while LED billboards are strategic in enhancing the awareness of brands, lighting up the skylines at night, and beautifying the environment, it is becoming increasing clear that the rising cost of acquiring and maintaining this form of advertising would have to be justified by a nimble strategy of deploying smart data.

Remaining relevant and competitive in the dynamic technologydriven environment requires all forwardthinking practitioners to adopt new skills and be able to give value to their clients.

In the final analyses, the scenic value of LED billboards is not germane to the corporate objective of advertisers. The objective of the companies is to see the impact of their media spend on their bottom line. The beauty of the emerging innovation in outdoor advertising is that practitioners can help companies target their campaigns to the appropriate demographics to maximise their sale objective.

To be sure, the advent of new technologies does not require OOH advertising agencies to abandon old sites. For instance, the market response to LED billboards drastically reduced patronage of static billboards. Most practitioners were converting their static billboards to LED billboards. The appropriate strategy would have been to develop new sites separate from the existing static billboards sites so as to present the advertisers with buying options. Therefore, as the inventory of OOH portfolios widens, companies can be properly advised, depending on their budgets, on the optimum form of OOH advertising they need to buy.

But while the industry adopts technology and smart data to boost growth, management practices in the Nigerian outdoor advertising industry have not evolved. For an industry that dates back to the 1920s, and that has undergone various stages of development, the dominant ownership structure is sole proprietorship.

Another unsettling practice in this almost century-old industry is that state governments have also crowded out the private sector practitioners. Apart from regulating the industry with the sole aim of imposing exorbitant taxes on billboards and other out-of-home advertising structures, the state governments are also selling outdoor advertising by allocating sites to themselves and reselling same to private sector practitioners.

To give the state governments a run for their money, while also addressing the ownership structural issue in the industry, OOH advertising agencies would need to consider consolidation. I have argued in a previous article that consolidation of existing corporate structures is necessary to enhance growth opportunities in the out-ofhome advertising industry. Part of this would entail deepening portfolio offerings, providing more value to clients, and fostering the best corporate governance practices, among other benefits. It should go without saying that consolidation will offer deeper financing pockets for the merged entities to be able to mitigate the state governments' encroachment in the industry.

An additional benefit of addressing the corporate structural issue is to improve ethical conduct in the industry, especially in areas where the subsisting ownership structures tend to encourage questionable practices such as poor remuneration. Akachi Ngwu is the Founder/CEO of Consumer Scores International Limited, a Lagos-based in–store advertising solutions provider. He is an alumnus of the Business Leadership Programme of Leap Africa. Email: akachi.ngwu@csinichead-ng.com