THE INTERNET AND DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS

 The Internet has become a good platform to engage in advertising, sales and promotion of services, writes Sonny Aragba-Akpore

With growing access to the internet in Nigeria, and the global communities, smart people have begun to leverage this for online trading, sales and advertising of products and services.

To order for a car ride for instance, one does not need to know anybody or company. All one needs is any alp of Uber, Bolt and the recently introduced Rida.

It’s as simple as that. And the beauty of this is that the ride fares are empirically given depending on the time of the day. There are off peak and peak periods for these transactions.

  Many people, especially celebrities, musicians, artistes, journalists, politicians now make their presence felt on instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, among others.

For the elite, LinkedIn is where you find them. Twitter is in a word of its own as it’s where you find members of the upper echelons who communicate almost every minute of the day their breakthroughs and escapades and sometimes just information for public consumption.

All of these platforms create opportunities for users to engage in advertising and sales and sometimes outright promotion of products and services.

But all these are predicated on a working internet even if not necessarily robust yet and of course smart devices including but not limited to phones and tablets.

Electronics commerce and electronic business are on the rise and this trend has created mega operators where owners don’t need to fire a shot to attract the expected dividends.

Amazon, Jumia, Konga, have made sizable impact on individuals who shop from the comfort of their homes for the products and services they desire. Jiji joined the train and has become a veritable platform where people buy and sell.

  As internet access and adoption grow increasingly worldwide, the number of digital buyers keeps climbing every year. In 2020 alone, over two billion people purchased goods or services online, and during the same year, e-retail sales surpassed 4.2 trillion U.S. dollars globally.

Mobile phones are boosting e-commerce traffic. One of the most visible trends in the world of e-commerce today is the large scale usage of mobile devices. 

    In 2021, smartphones accounted for almost 70 percent of all retail website visits worldwide, even though desktop and tablet visits generated higher conversion rates in 2020.  Adoption of mobile devices is also on the rise at a rapid pace, especially in regions that lack other digital infrastructure.

And mobile integration will continue to shape the shopping experience of the future. M-commerce is particularly popular across Asia, with countries like South Korea generating up to 65 percent of their total online transaction volumes via mobile traffic.

Market leaders have emerged in the world of e-commerce and this creates opportunities for Internet users to choose from various online platforms to browse, compare, and purchase the items or services they need. 

  While some websites specifically target B2B (business-to-business) clients, individual consumers are also presented with a vast number of digital possibilities. As of 2019, online marketplaces accounted for the largest share of online purchases worldwide. Leading the global ranking of online retail websites in terms of traffic is Amazon: The Seattle-based e-commerce giant that offers e-retail, computing services, consumer electronics, and digital content registered over 5.2 billion unique visitors in June 2020. In terms of gross merchandise value (GMV), however, Amazon ranks third behind Chinese competitors Taobao and Tmall. Both platforms are operated by the Alibaba Group, the leading online commerce provider in Asia.

In its Global Digital Insights released recently, DataReportal put Nigeria’s total population at  214.1 million in January 2022.

  Data show that Nigeria’s population increased by 5.3 million between 2021 and 2022. It says 49.3 percent of Nigeria’s population is female, while 50.7 percent of the population is male.

DataReportal says that at the beginning of 2022, 53.4 percent of Nigeria’s population lived in urban centres, while 46.6 percent lived in rural areas. The median age of the population in Nigeria is 18.2.

    The report further says there were 109.2 million internet users in Nigeria in January 2022. Nigeria’s internet penetration rate stood at 51.0 percent of the total population at the start of 2022. Kepios analysis indicates that internet users in Nigeria increased by 4.8 million between 2021 and 2022.

What this means is that 104.9 million people in Nigeria did not use the internet at the start of 2022, showing that 49.0 percent of the population remained offline at the beginning of the year.

   Ookla published data indicate that Median mobile internet connection speed via cellular networks stood at  17.38 Mbps.

Fixed internet connection speed is 10.06 Mbps. Ookla’s data further reveal that the median mobile internet connection speed in Nigeria increased by 4.88 Mbps in the 12 months to the start of 2022.

 Ookla’s data also indicated that fixed internet connection speeds in Nigeria increased by 2.42 Mbps during the same period. There were 32.90 million social media users in Nigeria in January 2022 according to the data.

Data Reportal analysis says the number of social media users in Nigeria at the start of 2022 was equivalent to 15.4 percent of the total population, but it’s important to note that social media users may not represent unique individuals.

  For instance data published in Meta’s advertising resources indicate that Facebook had 26.10 million users in Nigeria in early 2022. However, Meta made important changes to the way its advertising resources report audience reach data at the end of 2021 – including making significant revisions to its base audience data for Facebook. The company’s revised audience figures mean that Facebook’s ad reach in Nigeria was equivalent to 12.2 percent of the total population at the start of 2022.

However, Facebook restricts the use of its platform to people aged 13 and above, so it’s also worth highlighting that 19.8 percent of the “eligible” audience in Nigeria uses Facebook in 2022. Facebook’s ad reach in Nigeria was equivalent to 23.9 percent of the local internet user base (regardless of age) in January 2022.

The report says that at the start of 2022, 41.2 percent of Facebook’s ad audience in Nigeria was female, while 58.8 percent was male. Google’s advertising resources indicate that YouTube had 32.90 million users in Nigeria in early 2022. This figure means that YouTube’s 2022 ad reach was equivalent to 15.4 percent of Nigeria’s total population at the start of the year.

In clear terms, YouTube ads reached 30.1 percent of Nigeria’s total internet user base (regardless of age) in January 2022.

At that time, 44.7 percent of YouTube’s ad audience in Nigeria was female, while 55.3 percent was male.

Google’s advertising resources only publish audience gender data for “female” and “male” users. Numbers published in Meta’s advertising tools indicate that Instagram had 9.05 million users in Nigeria in early 2022. This figure suggests that Instagram’s ad reach in Nigeria was equivalent to 4.2 percent of the total population at the start of the year.

 Instagram restricts the use of its platform to people aged 13 and above, so it’s helpful to know that 6.9 percent of the “eligible” audience in Nigeria uses Instagram in 2022. Instagram’s ad reach in Nigeria at the start of 2022 was equivalent to 8.3 percent of the local internet user base.

In early 2022, 44.3 percent of Instagram’s ad audience in Nigeria was female, while 55.7 percent was male. Data published in Meta’s advertising resources indicate that ads on Facebook Messenger reached 4.05 million users in Nigeria in early 2022.

However, Meta made important changes to the way its advertising resources report audience reach data at the end of 2021 – including making significant revisions to its base audience data for Facebook Messenger – so the figures shown here are not directly comparable with figures published in our previous reports.

The company’s revised audience numbers suggest that Facebook Messenger’s ad reach in Nigeria was equivalent to 1.9 percent of the total population at the start of the year.

Aragba-Akpore is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board