Nigeria: The Largest and Fastest Growing Mobile Ad Market in Africa

According to research carried out by INMOBI, Mobile media consumption is continuing to grow exponentially in Nigeria and, indeed, across much of the African continent. The research which revealed growth of 37% in mobile advertising impressions on its Nigeria mobile network for the first three months of 2012.

With more than 8 billion advertising impressions for the first quarter, Nigeria is InMobi’s largest mobile advertising network in Africa and, according to Isis Nyong’o – VP & MD, for InMobi Africa, the consistent month-on-month growth in mobile advertising impressions is evidence of the rising importance of mobile technology as a marketing medium in the country.

“The stellar increase in impressions from 5,8 billion in the last quarter of 2011 to over 8 billion in the first three months of 2012 is clear proof of the rising popularity of the medium amongst Nigerian consumers, and shows that marketing professionals and brand managers across the country are increasingly embracing mobile media as viable and effective advertising channels.” – Isis Nyong’o (VP & MD, for InMobi Africa)

The press statement also pointed to the fact that smart phone usage in Nigeria is also on the rise as approximately 10% of all mobile advertising impressions recorded on the Nigerian InMobi network were from smartphones. This represents quarter-on-quarter growth of 42% in smart phone use in the country, pointing to the rapid adoption of this technology by growing numbers of Nigerians.

At a product specific level, Nokia continues to dominate the Nigerian market, accounting for 77% of all impressions. While this is slightly down on the 79% of the previous quarter, it remains significantly higher than any of its closest rivals, with Samsung phones delivering 9% of total impressions followed by LG phones at 5%. The Nokia C1-01 remains the most extensively used mobile device in terms of mobile advertising access, accounting for 15,3% of all impressions recorded on Nokia handsets. While RIM (Blackberry) phones only accounted for 2% of the total mobile advertising impressions on the InMobi network, it is perhaps significant that this is the fastest growing brand in terms of impressions, having enjoyed 0.4% growth on the previous quarter.

Between January and March 2012, impressions via smartphones grew by 19% across all InMobi Africa networks and accounted for 24% of the total number of impressions recorded. In terms of the numbers of impressions recorded via individual handsets, the Blackberry 8520 overtook Nokia for the first time since InMobi has been conducting its research. However, Nokia remains the dominant cellphone brand overall, with 60% of all InMobi network impressions recorded on this brand of handsets.

This statement tells me that there is a huge data traffic running through the corridors of Nigeria’s telecommunication companies which would in-turn increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). It also goes a long way to say the time has come for Nigerian based developers and Startup to re-awaken skills, fine-tune business models in order to server this subscribers as well as cash out from the current mobile ad inferno.

Going by the growing statistics, businesses across Nigeria should wake up to know, the next way to advertising is via mobile ad.

Full Press Statement on INMOBI