allAfrica.com: Kenya: Advertisers Move to Boost Quality of Media Research (Page 1 of 2)

Makutano Junction, currently airing on KBC is a highly popular locally produced drama series set on the outskirts of a fictional town in Kenya.

It features the loves and lives of certain characters that live in Makutano, as well as weaving messages into the storylines on a wide variety of social issues such as mental health, abortion, domestic violence and prevention of tuberculosis and HIV.

But measuring its popularity in hard data has proved to be a headache. Its creators, The Mediae Company, claims the series -which was first broadcast in Kenya between October and December 2005 -has a viewership of five million in Kenya alone. This figure is based on the company's own research, but advertisers dispute this claim, saying the viewership numbers is much lower.

"We're confident we have a big audience, but ad agencies are not convinced because they are getting their figures from another source which indicates we have a much lower audience," says Mr David Campbell, director of Media.

The problem of measuring the popularity of radio and TV programmes and by extension the reach of various media houses in Kenya is a long running problem. At the heart of this issue is the failure by media houses, advertising and research agencies to develop a system of generating audience research that all stakeholders have confidence in.

And this is not just in Kenya. The Achilles heel of advertising in Africa is media research. A wave of deregulation across the continent in the past decade has resulted in an explosion of dozens of commercial broadcasters, but so far hardly any are able to support their sales pitch with credible audience research. For instance, Campbell claims that the difference between their data and that of Steadman is because of the methodology used by the latter.

Steadman uses media diaries which require respondents to be literate and easily reached. This has resulted in biased sampling in urban areas, which is not representative of the entire population. "Our research is representative of both rural and urban population and is therefore more accurate," says Mr Campbell.

Although Kenya participated in the All-Media and Product Survey, the brainchild of the Pan-African Media Research Organisation (Pamro) based in South Africa, there has been no survey since 2005. Industry players say funding is the main problem as media owners and advertising agencies have failed to commit money to do surveys regularly. But growth in annual advertising expenditure which hit Sh15 billion last year and the fragmentation of audiences due to the numerous radio and TV stations now in the market have galvanised advertisers to address the issue of credible audience research.

A few players in the industry have come together under the Kenya Advertising Research Foundation (Karf), which released its first audience research survey recently. "Ad agencies are the ones leading this initiative, but we have support from major advertisers who understand the value of proper audience research," says Annette Martyres, chairperson of the Advertising Practitioners of Kenya (APA). A few large media owners have also joined the initiative.

"Karf was born out of a need for proper audit of adspend figures and recognition that we need more sophisticated research tools like in other more developed countries," she says. To join Karf , new members are required to pay Sh2 million- a tall order for small companies whose entire marketing budget for a year is usually less than this amount.

"We are encouraging more people to come on board because we want to take audience measurement to a whole new level. As more companies join, the cost per individual member will come down," says Ms Martyres.

Echoing her sentiments is Mr George Waititu, group managing director of the Steadman Group, which was commissioned by Karf to do its inaugural audience research after a competitive bidding process. He says advertising agencies need to invest in audience research to ensure every shilling reaches target audiences.

"Advertisers need to justify their ad spend and without data they rely on gut feel and end up not knowing where they are wasting funds," he says.

For media owners, investing in audience research is about staying competitive by generating programming that is relevant to their audiences.

"Media owners need data to know how well their programmes are performing and also to set their rate cards objectively. Data will also help with marketing so that they are able to position themselves and sell advertising based on their audience demographics," he says.

The underlying often unspoken reason why efforts to develop credible audience research have failed in the past is that some media owners have benefited from the vacuum. They have been able to set high rate cards by claiming large audiences that cannot be verified by independent research or an effective audit bureau of circulation.

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