FG Charges Audience Measurement Task Force to Grow TV Market to $700m

Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja

The federal government has mandated the Audience Measurement Task Force to increase the Nigerian television advertisement revenue to over $700 million the next three years.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, gave the charge yesterday at the inauguration of the 15–man task force to ensure an accurate, reliable and timely audience measurement system for the Nigerian broadcast and advertising industry.

He lamented that the absence of a scientific audience measurement system has resulted in under-development in the broadcast and advertising industries and stunted their growth.

The minister said the country’s broadcast advertising market conservatively at $309 million is punching far below its weight in comparison to that of South Africa, which generated $1.6 billion in 2016.

He said the advertising community has continued to rely on subjective factors when making decisions on the content they want, as opposed to how many viewers the content truly attracts.

Mohammed said the absence of a scientific audience measurement regime has resulted in under-investment in the sector, which is necessary to foster the growth of the industry.

The minister said the existing model would never allow the country’s creative industry to attain its full potential, adding that it stunts the quality of the content that can be created and also limits the capacity of television platforms to invest in dynamic contents that consumers will be attracted to.

He described a world-class audience measurement system as critical to the success of the Digital Switch Over (DSO), noting that without it, there will be no growth in the television or the value creation in the creative industry that the economy and people of Nigeria desire.

The Chairman of the Task Force, Mr. Tolu Ogunkoya, described the task before the members as enormous, saying they would reach out to all other stakeholders in the industry.