He who pays the piper, calls the tune, goes the old adage. In the media, negative content about brands is often frowned upon. It gets worse when the content is so bad that the brand decides to pull out advertising, the life blood of media houses. Often times, this leads to the marketers heading to plead with the advertiser to reconsider their decision.
This could explain why it is rare to see certain brands receiving negative publicity or when it is aired or published, the content is below par.
Nevertheless, who are the top advertisers in Kenya for traditional media houses?
According to the Kenya Audience Research Foundation (KARF) data, Lotto reigns supreme, at least as far as 2017. Lotto spent over sh10 billion in print, radio and TV. It spent; sh5.147 billion on TV, sh4.196 billion on radio and over sh126 million in print publication.
Safaricom was second with over sh7.9 billion. For the biggest telco in the region, radio took the lions share at sh4.76 billion.
Coca cola was third, spending over sh4.355 billion in advertising with the majority going to TV at sh2.314 billion.
Multichoice Kenya was fourth at sh3.112 billion with the national government being fifth at sh2.94 billion.
All the big five spent the least on print.
Other brands collectively spent sh79.161 billion.
According to the data, the total ad spent for 2017 in the three media platforms was sh107,708,348,295. TV has the largest share at sh54,513,910,247. Radio had sh47,289,486,434 while print had sh5,904,951,614.
Pricing for airtime in the different platforms is largely the determinant for the ad spent, with TV being the most expensive. A prime time news advertising could cost in excess of sh400, 000 per second or higher in some of the top TV stations and prime time news and programs.
The data further shows that while advertising has been increasing yearly from 2014 to 2017, private sector advertising gives the most and increasing with bigger margin than the government.
In 2017 alone, private sector spent ten times more than government. Private sector spend in 2014 was sh85 billion while in 2017 it was sh108 billion. On the other hand, government advertising spend for 2014 was sh5 billion while in 2017 it was sh10 billion.
