In brief
- Uganda still a radio country despite the rampant TV and Digital (Online media) growth.
- High levels of unemployment hurting business in the country
- Unstable bank interest rates breeding business uncertainties in the country
- Weak local currency influencing commodity prices, hence reduced disposable income
- Unrest in South Sudan reduced incomes of producers and traders
- The world is rapidly becoming a global village, Western Pop Culture slowly taking over Africa
Companies spend money to reach their consumers and customers, it is called advertising. Advertising is big business.
Advertising agencies are always in endless “brainstorms” to notch the top spending advertisers. The 2016 list of Uganda’s top advertising spenders is out.
Over 350 billion shillings was spent on advertising in the year 2016 with beverage kings Coca Cola leading the pack with a whooping 19 billion shillings.
Who leads share of exposure
Corporate and multi-brand advertising took the lead of advertising spend. Huge Coca cola budgets pushed the beverage sector to second spot, relegating communication to 3rd position on the list of top spending macro sectors.
Health and Beverages have proved to be more consistent in the last 2 years now
Radio still the Key touch point for Advertisers
Radio scene is more cluttered with diversity of station formats to ensure that the various public needs are catered for. This fragmentation has left advertisers spoilt for choice hence bad news for “weak stations”.Radio is the real time medium with the broadest reach in Uganda and with no doubt Radio share is still strong with all these threats from other platforms.
Radio stations took the lion’s share of the ad spend taking 52% of the spent amounts, followed by Television with 28% while print continued to decline taking just 20%
Online and digital on the fast rise as choice for advertising
Online is becoming a key consideration for brand managers. Apparently companies are embracing media approaches such as experiential marketing, Online promotions ,Point of Sale marketing and media activity sponsorships as opposed to the traditional ways of advertising.
These approaches are popular with Beers, Pay TV’s and Telecom companies and they are working well for niche brands/ products
Multinational companies which have been the key drivers for huge ad spends are seriously considering digital as outright solution to cut media costs.
Advertising on the decline
General Ad spend figures went down by 6 percent over the same period last year.
After the general elections, companies traded softly with fears of election violence most especially in the capital Kampala.
Putting the election fever aside the slump in Ad figures was more specifically attributed to the absence of historical key spenders like Airtel, UBL and cutbacks from Unilever.
