Political Marketing: Ad Practitioners Foresee Increased Budget in 2022

Raheem Akingbolu

As a preceding year to Nigeria’s general election, there will be a boom in advertising revenue from political marketing and corporate environment in 2022, practitioners have predicted. They have also pointed out that the industry will record a whopping increase in digital advertising budget coupled with acceleration in digital penetration and innovation this year.

The President of Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN), Emmanuel Ajufo, who pointed out that the marketing communication industry, has become stronger after overcoming the challenge thrown at it by the gloomy realities of the last two years, said 2020 will be a stabilizer year as a result of beehive of marketing activities within and outside politics.

“It’s no more news that the world economy was threatened in the last two years and this also greatly affected marketing.

However, things are beginning to take shape. For Nigerian practitioners, this year will be a multiple blessing as we will explore both the corporate and political spaces. As I speak, preparations for elections in Ekiti and Osun have started and the 2023 general election is also around the corner. Politicians are beginning to understand the need to engage professionals and this will impact our industry positively. We should expect more print ads, television commercials and out of home advertisements. Our people should get prepared, the time for the work is now,” Ajufo said.

A former President of Experiential Marketing Association of Nigeria, Kehinde Salami, has also described 2021 as a robust year of activation agencies, stating that the possibility is high that 2022 will be more financially rewarding for the industry.

He said, “the surge in experiential marketing activities in 2021 has given us the 2022 outlook. Every day, brand owners are waking up to the importance of experiential marketing because the results are measurable faster than any channel of engagement.

This year, we are convinced that there will be more activities because the environment looks better than last year when COVID-19 challenge left us all in fear. Even though it is not yet uhuru, we are hopeful that things would be better this year,”
In his submission, Managing Director, Starcom Media Perspectives, Jude Odia told an online marketing portal that he was optimistic that there will be growth in the market this year as well as “a proliferation of platforms especially micro sites and blogs”.

“I hope to see the budget shift to digital and more potential in our overall media spend. I also hope to see an exponential growth of content and that will be a drive for mobile and the kind of growth we also hope to see in the digital media space. Digital will fundamentally be the primary beneficiary of that growth because it will grow more at the expense of the traditional media.”

“Fortunately, 2022 is ushering in positive expectations for the ad world as advertising across all digital channels have been projected to exceed 60% of global adspend for the first time this year, reaching 61.5% of total expenditure according to market reports from Publicis Groupe media agency, Zenith. WPP’s GroupM also predicted an additional 13.5% growth in 2022 as digital now makes up the lion’s share of advertising spending and is expected to account for 64.4% of total advertising this year, up from 60.5% in 2020.

The steady growth of internet users globally has become an important factor fueling the growth of the online internet advertising market.

“With marketers leveraging internet advertising to achieve their marketing goals, the rise of social media bloggers, growing trend of influencer marketing, growing demand for e-commerce and social commerce accelerated by the pandemic, and the continuous increase in penetration of internet across the globe has presented a great opportunity for internet advertising. Some of these channels include banners, remarketing, pay-per-call ads, pay-per-click ads, and pop-ups through e-newsletters and personalized email marketing, search engine optimisation, social media ads, and online magazines,” he stated.