This morning a, joint report by TIFA Research and Reelforge Media Intelligence was released about the media landscape in Kenya.

Excerpts from the report

• Advertising remains a key source of revenue of media. Also the media, while still powerful faces many challenges including global competition for advertisers (Facebook and Google), and for consumers from other digital platforms.
• Audiences are fragmented, with people interacting with five radio and 3 TV stations every day. TIFA has tried to improve on the traditional data collecting methods for audience measurement by using an app in the phones of test subjects.
• For brands, Facebook is the most effective – used by 71% of corporations to reach audiences, followed by Twitter 26%. Least used are podcasts, email and surprisingly WhatsApp – despite its prevalence (all below 2%).
• Social media and content marketing are the most effective ways of reaching consumers, according to the report. The least effective methods are email campaigns, public relations and outdoors advertising (all below 8%).
• Whatsapp and Facebook are the most popular platforms with internet audiences – used by over 80% of the respondents – and this is largely because they are free from Telecom providers.
• The top media spender in 2019 is projected to be Safaricom with Kshs 9.7 billion. In 2018 it was gambling company Tatua which spent Kshs 5.3 billion. In 2017 it was the Government of Kenya which spent Kshs 8.6 billion in that was an election year. Spending by gambling companies has been on the rise with half of the top advertising companies now being betting firms.
• Radio remains attractive because it is free for audiences access. It also had the has the highest advertising over the period – mainly by political parties during the  2017 Kenya elections.
• Newspaper circulation continued to decline, and the authors estimated at circulation went down by 33% between 2013 and 2018.
• Digital migration has increased the reach of TV. Today, Kenya has 173 radio stations, 68 TV stations and 9 newspapers. 

The report by TIFA and Reelforge is now available for download.