The ever-evolving landscape of digital advertising demands not only keeping pace with trends but also understanding the audience’s pulse. As Nigeria embraces digitalisation, the key lies in comprehending the audience, exploring innovative solutions and preparing for a future where the digital landscape is more interconnected and accessible than ever before, all while respecting privacy. This shift has led various digital platforms to focus on increasing internet penetration and expanding the digital footprint in Nigeria. They are curating unique targeting options and creative advertising formats, such as gamification and dynamic adverts, positioning themselves at the forefront of providing solutions that address the sector’s needs.

Global advertising technology company, Eskimi, in a seminar held at Radisson, Ikeja Lagos, highlighted key trends and challenges in the digital advertising ecosystem. The seminar, whose theme was “AdTech Trends; Evolving Digital Identity and Capturing Attention,” explored trends in AdTech and how they can be maximised. The digital advertising landscape in Nigeria is undergoing rapid transformation, presenting challenges and opportunities for brands and advertisers. At the forefront of these changes in 2024 is the impending deprecation of cookies, particularly notable with Google’s plan to eliminate them by the end of the year.

According to the facilitators, Google has already deprecated one per cent of cookies in the first quarter of 2024, prompting the exploration of alternative ID solutions such as Id5, Prebid and UID 2.0 to maintain targeted advertising while safeguarding user privacy. Also discussed was the shrinking attention span of digital users, attributed to the prevalence of bite-sized content on various social media platforms.  To combat this, brands were urged to be proactive and innovative and to increasingly explore creative innovations while expanding into new advertising channels such as audio platforms as well as connected TV (CTV).

Brands were also urged to prioritise attention metrics to gauge the effectiveness of their ads, track user engagement and improve ad performance over time. It was also emphasised that while measuring attention metrics is crucial, it does not compromise user privacy. The data is aggregated to analyse audience behaviour and improve advertising strategies, ensuring that brands can effectively engage with their target audience in a privacy-conscious manner.

 
Eskimi Business Development Director, Vita Garifulina, said: “We looked at cookie-less environments, which is beginning next year because it has a lot to do with targeting and people’s data in digital advertising. We also explored attention which is very important because we are exposed to quite a lot of ads online and how brands should utilise their budget to get customer’s attention. Also explored were creative innovations which are also important because they are concerned with grabbing users’ attention.”

 
Garifulina said the event provides users the opportunity to get drowned in thousands of ads daily. That is why we always want to help our clients and partners to utilise their marketing budget respectively which brings us to effective marketing strength. “I have worked with Nigerian brands and agencies for 12 years now and I can say it’s evolving quite quickly. When we started everyone said they just wanted a traditional mode of advertising with billboards, radio, etc. It took us some time to convince them on how digital is better than traditional media buying. I think that Nigeria has a very progressive market; people are bold and open to innovation. Some of the creative formats we have are very bold and Nigerian brands are not afraid to experiment and follow global trends,” she said.

She advised brands to be more open to experiments while emphasizing the importance of continuous learning, following global trends and bringing it to the local market. “If brands understand the importance of data and creative innovations, they learn and follow some global environment and digital programmatic advertising; everything is going to be fine. Although a lot of people are beginning to get certifications, traveling and studying. I think the market is quite good if we don’t talk about the economic situation,” she said.

Senior Account Manager of Eskimi for West and Central Africa, Tayo Adediwura, noted that the depreciation of cookies has been an ongoing conversation for about three, or four years now and it has come to a head in 2024 when some of the plans that Google has to deprecate cookies have finally been actualised and will be out totally by the end of the year.

 
He said: “In the first quarter of this year, Google already deprecated one per cent of cookies. We recently started testing out the Google Privacy sandbox. There’s also the rise of alternative ID solutions such as ID five, Prebid, and UID 2.0. Everybody just tries to solve the problem of privacy or make sure that we can continue running advertising campaigns programmatically, without basically opening up people to privacy issues, having people steal their data, or being tracked in a very unconventional or spooky way.”

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He encouraged brands to be more innovative and look to explore more creative innovations and channels because there are a lot more other channels where users are a bit more attentive than the other and then explore measuring attention so that they can improve on those metrics outside of whatever metrics they have been collecting in the past.

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Adediwura said: “In trying to command users’ attention, knowing that they have an average of about three seconds to register whatever is being communicated to them, brands have started exploring more options such as adding creative innovations that are big and intrusive because smaller formats for advertising don’t work as they used to.

 
“Brands have also started exploring more channels. We see people advertising on audio channels and it’s because attention on these platforms is a bit higher because people are listening to music, thereby taking advantage of their ears, they have their earplugs. There’s also connected television CTV, where you can reach people via TVs or Smart TV consoles, their game consoles and others.

“Brands are also looking to measure attention metrics outside of the regular advertising metrics that we’re measuring. One of the ways Eskimi is prioritising attention metrics is in collaboration with Lumen. “So, one can track people’s eyeballs when they are looking at your ads, how long they were looking at your ads and what they were looking for. It’s very interesting because the reason they are collecting these metrics is so that they can improve on them.”

He further encouraged brands to evolve with the trends and understand them because doing so can help them become confident in coming up with solutions and innovations. He noted that digitally, Nigeria still has a long way to go in terms of patronising channels, which he said results from many Nigerians not owning smart TVs.

 
Eskimi’s Creative Director, Jevgenij Piliusin, enlightened the participants on how to use creativities to boost the attention of users in digital environments. He advised huge brands to pay more attention to gamification as a way of gaining attention while smaller brands were advised to focus on simpler ways and not deep user interactions.

According to Digital Media Manager of TBWA concepts, Biose Isichei, running an advertising agency in Nigeria has its highs and lows seeing that, in the early days, the adoption of traditional advertising means such as radio, TV and others have been used for advertisement but currently a lot of technology has been implemented to improve how marketing and communications are for brands. “We need to be innovative in terms of how we provide our services. Part of what we do is leverage technology in the advertising industry effectively to deliver the best to our clients. It’s a win-win for us, I must say.

“If you look at how ads have been done in newspapers, video TV commercials, the social media ads. YouTube ads, we also have programmatic ads, which is where Eskimi comes in on how they have been able to diversify the rates at which ads are been executed. From the high-impact ads to the takeover banners to the Google cookies which are about to be changed. We learned a lot. It is also a pointer for us in the advertising industry on how we need to approach new ways of doing our creatives.

 
“Eskimi has been able to up their game in that aspect and we are looking at doing the same in our agency because we are beginning to see the need for programmers doing creatives for agencies and leveraging on technological tools effectively to get the best results,” Isichei said.

The Team Lead of Felfo Digital, Tunde Ojo expressed his satisfaction with the outcome of the event, stating that it was a very good initiative by Eskimi to get everyone on board with the evolving trend around users’ identity and how best to catch the attention of the audience as regards brand-related campaigns. He said: “We needed to understand that for every trend, there has to be some sorts of tool or evolving technology that will help brands understand how to better manage their audience identity. I work with a marketing agency and I can say for a fact that some of the tools or technology that Eskimi has developed would help.”

The Digital Marketing Manager of Hala Bets, Abiola Adeniyi said: “We talked about identifying digital advertising trends and just from what we learned today, we are already looking at how we can implement the different methods, strategies, and creatives to optimise future advertising campaigns. The floating ad, for example, is a very interesting concept which we can use. Maybe when our users are on the sports site, a floating ad could pop up, giving them details about the game they are looking at, and pulling them to our website. We are also going to look at the other high-impact adverts, and technologies we were shown and pick the ones that suit us.”

 
Continuous learning and adaptation are paramount in this dynamic landscape. Brands must stay abreast of global trends, experiment with new ideas, and remain open to innovations to stay competitive. By addressing these challenges and implementing innovative solutions, brands can navigate the evolving digital advertising ecosystem in Nigeria effectively, optimising their campaigns for better engagement and results.