InMobi: Nigeria Continues To Lead In Mobile Advertising In Africa

VENTURES AFRICA –  A recent research has revealed that Nigeria remains Africa’s largest mobile advertising market with over 95million active subscribers. As a result of this development, the Nigeria’s mobile advertising market has recorded a huge growth.
The research was conducted by InMobi, a leading independent mobile advertising network in the world revealed that mobile consumption continues to grow exponentially in Nigeria and indeed, across the African continent.
According to the Vice- President and Managing Director, InMobi Africa, Ms. Isis Nyong’o, this development has made Nigeria Africa’s largest mobile advertising market.

“The stellar increase in impressions from 5.8 billion in the last quarter of 2011 to over eight billion in the first three months of 2012 is a clear proof of the rising popularity of the medium among Nigerian consumers and shows that marketing professionals and brand managers across the country are increasingly embracing mobile media as viable and effective advertising channels,” she said.
She attributed the increase in mobile advertising in Nigeria to the rising importance of technology as a marketing medium in the country. Nigeria records a total number of 37% growth in the first quarter of 2012.

The research also revealed that the growing popularity of Smartphone technology with 42% quarter-on-quarter growth and the approximately 10 per cent of all mobile advertising impressions recorded on the Nigerian InMobi has helped the deep penetration of mobile advertising in Nigeria.

Nyong’o says the latest growth in Nigerian mobile advertising impressions from 2010 to 2011 shows the growth in popularity of mobile advertising as a consumer medium in the country. Nigeria also recorded more than eight billion advertising impressions in the first quarter.  “From a usage perspective, the research confirms that Nigeria, like many other emerging markets, remains highly mobile centric, with the average mobile web user surveyed spending up to 5.5 hours engaged with media every day – up to two hours of which involves their mobile phones.”

In a related development, TNS, a marketing research company conducted a similar research known as Mobile Life Study across 43 countries including Nigeria, on the Nigerian market.

The Chief Executive Officer, Africa and Middle East, TNS, Mr.Kim Macllwaine, says digital marketing especially on the mobile will grow tremendously. He said that many companies in Nigeria are commissioning studies and research with the aim of knowing what Nigerians do on the Internet via their mobile phones and how to leverage that for marketing development.

“There is a huge explosion for digital marketing research and what that leads to is that companies are spending more and more of their marketing budget on digital marketing. There is a very large client of ours that is planning to spend 25 per cent of its marketing budget for 2012 on digital marketing,” Macllwaine said.

The InMobi research also revealed that as a result of mobile usage popularity, many mobile users now use mobile devices extensively for the purposes of communication, entertainment, obtaining information and, even, online shopping. It indicated that 67% of those surveyed cited their mobile phone as their primary or exclusive means of online access while 63% of those surveyed also pointed to mobile technology as the primary influencer of their purchasing behaviour. Ease of use and privacy are cited as the primary two reasons for the preference of using online mobile technology.

In terms of mobile brand preference, Nokia continues to dominate the Nigerian mobile market with 77 per cent of all impressions on the InMobi network. It is followed by Samsung phones with 9% and LG phones with 5% while Blackberry phones only accounted for two per cent of the total mobile advertising impressions on the InMobi network.