Just last month, Marketing Edge did an impressive investigation on Nigeria’s ad spend. Pretty revealing, but it appears people just moved on.

What a wow. At least N13.4 billion representing 54 per cent of total advertising expenditure in 2016 went ‘missing’ and life just goes on? 

We don’t think so. So we have 7 of the key points here:

Media monitoring, on fleek:

According to the marketing and advertising magazine, an estimated N13.4 billion of media advertising which would have been paid for was either misplaced (i.e. advert not carried as planned and ordered) or unaccounted for (i.e. advert not monitored to be sure it was carried in the first place). The situation is compounded by allegations that some media monitoring service providers may have been conniving with some radio and television stations as well as media agency employees to issue questionable, even fraudulent compliance report over the years.

Darkness in the North:

The investigation showed that a radio station in the North claimed 100% compliance in the month of January 2017 but was proved wrong after back checks by a leading media monitoring service provider. Similarly, in another situation, one of the three monitoring service providers had given a zero compliance on a media campaign that none of the advert spots earlier booked by an advertiser was carried at all or on time as planned and ordered.

This is not government o:

“Our intelligence unit also gathered authoritatively that in one instance, a Finance Director of a leading multinational company summoned the Head of Marketing of his organisation and invited a media monitoring service provider whose reports allegedly resulted in huge savings on media spend for verification. At the end of the meeting, there was evidence that the marketing executives of the said company in collusion with the interfacing officials of broadcast organisation, had been creaming off media spend.

Even with recession:

At a time when businesses are under profit pressures from the economic recession while there remains a compelling need by the advertisers to invest even more in media advertising to cope with keen competition in the marketplace, it remains a mystery why and how business leaders seem to look the other way when it comes to transparency and accountability on the media advertising front. Why they would expend so much time and effort in ensuring raw materials and other inputs are delivered as per quality prescription, on time and within budget but lower the bar when it comes to media advertising deliveries.”

And the crux of the problem:

Companies and corporations will continue to spend huge billions of naira on media advertising without gaining requisite value for money as long as the Chief Executive Officers of these corporations fail to show more than a passing interest in the yearly media budget and how it was spent.’

Cue cliche: Only in Nigeria.