Behind the shift to online advertising

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by Lindsey Francy Feb 21, 2023 News
Behind the shift to online advertising

Advertising used to be done in cabs, elevators, convenience stores, gas pumps, and stadiums, but that is no longer the case.

Advertising is moving in a different direction. Everything is pointing on the internet. Digital marketing can't be ignored because of the shift from traditional marketing.

Digital marketing is the future of businesses. They are happy to allocate 57 percent of their budgets to digital marketing activities and are planning to increase spending by another 16 percent in 2023.

Is this the end of a century long era of advertising? Advertising shifts online. If you don't focus on digital, you could miss out on action.

The job of mapping the customer journey is getting more difficult because companies are engaging with customers across a growing landscape of apps, social platforms, websites, and more.

Collins Hinamundi says that it is a bad thing for businesses that depend on advertising to make money. For businesses that shift their advertising online, it's a way to reduce their spending and make more money from demographic changes in Uganda.

A man is searching for something on the internet. Traditional media is scrambling to get a piece of the online market as more advertising budgets move into it. The photo was taken by Isiah Kasamani.

It gets more effective to reach people on online platforms when the rest of the country is online. The platforms have refined their tools to the level where a business can actually target its customers directly, unlike the other platforms which are mass market and you can't be sure if your target customer saw your advert or not.

New consumption habits have led to a shift in the audience.

I used to consume news through newspapers and didn't trust anything until it ran on TV or in a newspaper to be confirmed. There is a generation of people who trust and believe Lumbuye over credible media houses in spite of various fact checks, he still commands an audience, he recounts, noting that a TV platform only managing to get 5000 views on.

Digital media die-hards are in all spaces and ensuring visibility online is one of them.

Hinamundi says it's important to define who you are as a business and why you're on the internet. When you lock those answers in, the content you create, the adverts you run and how you target them will be more effective.

He states that advertising shifting online has meant a drop in quality advertising, a flooding of fake and fictitious products to online audiences, things traditional advertising platforms would gate- keep or be held accountable for, as well as a lack of transparency.

Businesses have to spend more on content to get noticed outside of the millions of poor quality content running on these platforms because of the ease with which you can get online.

It is up to the business and its budget to decide how much these platforms will cost.

Content creation is the main cost but even that is getting cheaper with Artificial intelligence platforms that can turn text to video or audio This means that the costs are going down.

The advertising shift online is a great innovation according to Rachel Calnan.

Calnan says that it is not bad for either part of the audience or the vendor to reach people in real time.

She says that some people are fairly priced while others are more expensive.

Uganda Revenue Authority indicated that although there was a Shs98 billion shortfall for the half year largely coming from international taxes in the areas of the fuel levy and VAT on imports, it was perceived as difficult.

We are getting VAT from the transaction value and we are collecting it. There are a lot of things that we are getting and this is okay. Face Book sources income from Uganda and we have collected about 700 million dollars.