Omnimedia was founded in 2009, with its name stemming from the Latin word “Omnis” which translates to “every/all.” The media firm, right from its name branding signals its desire of integrating all physical channels (offline) and digital channels (online) to offer a unified customer experience. To this end the firm has involved itself in a wide array of services in the media industry such as; digital marketing, media monitoring, radio and TV, print and casting.
Capital reached out to Omnimedia’s Managing Director, Feruz Jemal for insights on what makes them a cut above the rest, in addition to other pertinent inquiries in the media space. Excerpts;
Capital: As a company working in media monitoring, what kind of data and research have you done or published so far?
Feruz Jemal: Omnimedia is purely a data company. So far, we have done multiple reports on audience measurement, Broadcast Medium Performance Reports, Share of Voice and weekly Hot Music countdown for radio stations and newspapers. As a business company, some of these researches and reports are products that we provide for companies, broadcast stations and NGOs. The general public knows us by our Weekly Hot Music Countdown which used to be broadcasted on Sheger FM 102.1 radio’s Endalkena Mahder show and now on Capital newspaper.
Capital: What are the main goals of these researches?
Feruz Jemal: Our products have a niche consumer group. Take our Broadcast Medium Performance Reports. These reports show the trend on print and broadcast advertisement industry as a whole. Generally speaking, advertisement media performance reports show how the media is performing in terms of total advertisement played or revenues generated. Broadcast stations, print medium products like newspapers and magazine can use these reports to know their performance standing, their competitor’s revenue sources and strategy to better cope with the competition. We had TV stations as a customer that used to get these reports to understand the advertisement spending trend and their competition.
Our Advertisement Share of Voice reports are for our business customers, for companies that has an advertisement presence both on print and broadcast mediums. It shows how our customer’s media campaigns are faring with its closest competitors. These helps our customers to have the bird’s eye view of the advertisement campaign performance of all their competitors. This immensely helps to better smooth out their media campaign strategy. Moreover, it is very difficult for business entities to track their advertisement is being properly transmitted. There always are instances of advertisement spots being missed or misplaced and that is a loss for the advertising business entity. It is paying without its ads running. Currently our data show between 12 and 14 percent of the advertisements are missed or misplaced. This needs a system that can track multiple stations and should have to 99.9 percent accuracy. In fact, we are the only company that tracks around 45 prints, radio and TV stations to prepare the aforementioned reports.
Capital: How are you tracking these many news outlets? Can you explain your workflow in brief?
Feruz Jemal: So, advertisement and media monitoring has been a manual endeavor here in Ethiopia. Following the explosion of the number of TV and radio stations we needed to come up with a solution to better serve the market. What we did was build an automated system that can record radio and TV stations 24/7, eliminating the need for manual recording of those stations. We went further as to build an AI assisted self-contained audio searching system on top of the automated recording system. That was 5 years ago. We are currently tracking 35 broadcast stations 24/7. Our system has the capability of finding new ads, music and shows on its own without a human involvement. But we usually feed and train our AI system by giving it the sample of the ad, music or show that we want to track. That is how we are generating these reports that I was mentioning earlier. Currently, we have a 5 years’ worth of broadcast industry data. We can even go back and find ads that run 4 or 5 years ago.
Capital: How would you define the relationship between media and advertisement?
Feruz Jemal: I don’t think we can separate these two issues. Both are dependent of the other. We cannot think of advertisement without thinking media in its general form and vice versa. If we saw the issue from the perspective of the media, particularly the private media, advertisement is the only income source and the media is very dependent on it. These media outlets’ thrive by selling an advertisement time for businesses, governmental & non-governmental entities. As you know the government owned or government affiliated broadcast companies usually has an annual budget from the public coffers. Not only that, these broadcast entities get a preferential treatment from the government in allocation of public announcements budget and news tips. They compete in the broadcast advertising sector but they are not dependent as the private media outlets. Be it in our country or in other countries, the private business sector is very much deciding the fate of the media particularly the private media. So basically, the current media landscape and form will not be possible without the advertisement of the private business sector. The data tells us that the government’s share of ad spending is miniscule compared to the private business sector at 3.44 percent of the total spending.
Capital: What are your views on the current development of the advertising sector?
Feruz Jemal: We are actually in the midst of a major media and advertisement business trend change. The first thing we noticed was the change in the number of ads on TV and radio. Radio used to lead TV in the number of ads transmitted but starting at around the Covid-19 lockdown, TV is getting more ads than radio. From July 2021 to April 2022 almost 65 percent of the 235,000 spots were run on TV. This is a huge trend change as radio stations are missing out the bulk of their advertisement business. A few of the most popular radio time slots are now being replaced by TV’s new shows attracting the advertisement. Usually, Saturday and Sunday were one of the most popular radio listening time for the public and that in turn made those time slots the most revenue generating ones for radios. But currently, TV is getting the most advertisement on that time slot. To show you in a little more detail, let’s look at Saturday. Saturday has one of the most popular radio shows from right after lunch time to late night. These are not the advertisement magnets that used to be. The trend is TV now. The time slot 1AM to 11AM is the only time slot that radio is leading TV in advertisement spot numbers on the weekends. 65 percent of the total ads run by the broadcast medium were on TV for those two days. This was unheard of a few years ago.
Actually, there are a few possible reasons why this change is unravelling not only on the weekend days but all weekdays. The first possible reason might be the fact that TV stations are giving out a ridiculous amount of free and bonus spots for their customers. On top of that, TV stations usually broadcast nonstop 24 hours a day unlike radio stations’ 18-hour broadcast time. Usually TV stations replay earlier shows on late night without removing the advertisements. Additionally, TV might be producing more popular shows than radio. These reasons might lead to more advertisement being played on TVs than radio.
Capital: But why is this happening?
Feruz Jamal: We believe there are a few reasons why this is happening. It may be due to the fact that TV stations are producing very good entertainment than before. Saturday and Sunday afternoon to late night time slots are becoming very popular among TV watchers. The other reason is a little bit scary for us. May be advertisement cost is pushing away those that are not at the top of the business ladder. Out of the thousands of business establishment only 20 to 25 companies are the only consistent advertisers. The 25 biggest & recurring spending brands have almost 45 percent of the share. We tracked around 650 distinct brands and the 25 of them has the share of almost half of the rest of the brands. Meaning 4 percent of the brands that has an advertisement in the last 10 months had the 45 percent share of the total advertisement run.
At least Radio advertisement should be accessible for medium and small business companies. Radio in average costs ETB 24 per second while TV cost around ETB 150 per second. A typical 30 second ad will cost these medium and small enterprises ETB 720 for radio and ETB 4,500 per single spot run. That might be costly for them. This will hurt radio more than TVs. In our opinion, radio stations should decrease their per second valuation so that more of these medium and small business enterprises advertise. That way, radio stations will diversify their advertisement source base, increase revenue and help business grow. They are already giving a lot of spots for free as a bonus and re run.
The second thing that is interesting to watch for is the number of ads being transmitted and the revenue that has been generated. The number of advertisement has been steadily keeping the trend line and slightly increasing as our data from July 2021 to March 2022 shows. There were a few up and downs over the trend line but that usually happen following public and religious holidays. What’s changing is what broadcast stations are doing to attract more advertisement. Stations are giving more spots for free as a bonus and as a rerun than anytime in Ethiopian broadcast industry history. Some stations are giving as much as a 100 percent bonus gift to secure a media campaign contract. Our fear is, this might generally decrease the revenue of the stations while keeping the same number of ads on air.
On top of that, TV stations usually broadcast nonstop 24 hours a day unlike radio stations’ 18-hour broadcast time. Usually TV stations replay earlier shows on late night without removing the advertisements. This might in turn inflate the number of spots run.
Capital: Nowadays due to various global and local issues quantity of advertisements revenue is getting low, what kind of direct impact would this have on Medias?
Feruz Jemal: The media sphere is usually dependent on external factors like the time of the year, the economic and political conditions of the country and so on. I believe this question is best answered by an economist but if I must, let me say a few things. Generally speaking, all involving actors be it media houses or media agencies, the economic and political situation that we are seeing has more effect on them than other businesses. The print and broadcast media seems to be thriving for the unsuspecting onlooker only based on the number and frequency of ads running or publishing. But things might not be that way. Media as a business will get hurt by the current economic and political situation of the local and global development. As a business, their cost of production will surely increase leading to an advertisement price hike which in turn results their revenue to decrease. Additionally, businesses that usually advertise might reconsider about spending their cash on advertisement in such an economic restraint times. This will undoubtedly hurt the media sphere more. Like I said, this should be answered by an economist.
Capital: What should be done to increase advertisement, since most of or all of the private Medias income is dependent on advertisement?
Feruz Jemal: We can suggest a few things. Media houses need to try and accommodate businesses that usually don’t engage them. Particularly, medium size businesses should have the chance to advertise their businesses. This is not the case right now. Right now banks, soft drinks and Satellite TV package providers, the top 3 spending business categories, spend 43.1 percent of the total advertisement spending. The top 10 spending business categories are the source of 73.9 Percent of the total media spending. The rest of spending business categories only contributes 27 percent of the total revenue. This is not good. Medium scale businesses are being cutoff of the media and the advertisement market. Moreover, stations are relaying on in too few business categories risking the already strangled income stream.
Prices might not be the only pushing factor and the lack of initiative on the business side might be another reason to consider. The price of stations is giving a bad reputation for print and broadcast ads as a privilege that some few can enjoy. This perception needs to change. Additionally, the advertisement production and distribution process might be a little difficult for them to handle. Creative agencies and media houses should lead the initiative to bring this businesses on air.
The other factor is the ratio of the advertisement time or space compared to the total broadcast time or page count. For example per our advertisement proclamation, stations can only sell 20 percent or 12 minutes of each hour for advertisement. That might need another look at by the Ethiopian media authority. As a commercial media house, their entire existence is highly dependent on the amount of time they are allowed to sell. Surely this might need additional research to definitively say it but it is worth to look at.
Capital: Is there anything you want to add?
Feruz Jemal: It might be misleading only to say that the number of ads running is increasing. This increase usually don’t bring any significant income as most if not all of it are a giveaway as an incentive to get advertisement contracts. Actually, the overall media landscape and the actors involved are more at risk of closure than a few years ago. The Covid-19 crisis, the situation in the northern part of the country and the follow up economic growth deceleration directly affected the broadcast industry as a whole and media houses in particular. Most of the media houses depend on a single business category or the bulk of their source of advertisement income might come from a one or two business categories like bank or soft drinks. This situation had caused a lot of problem a few years ago when the ministry of health banned alcoholic beverage advertisements form the traditional media. This business category used to cover 47 percent of the total advertisement run. A lot of media houses still didn’t fully recover from this.
To get out of this situation, it needs the participation of all actors involved. Media houses should reconsider their business strategy, media agencies and media houses should try to diversify their customer base beyond those that are known in the media sphere, the regulatory government agency should see a way to help these actors by revising the laws and proclamations. It is a collective effort that is needed.
