Advertising: The Web is Too Big to be Ignored – Dominic Essien, CEO, Seed Media Ltd

Dominic Essien, CEO of Seed Media, is reputed to have brought the Yahoo online advertising to Nigeria. In addition, his company also represents major international portals like Facebook, YouTube, Hotmail and Google in Nigeria. Recently, he spoke with M2 on the concept of online advertising and marketing. Affirming that many Nigerian companies are warming up to the numerous advantages that online advertising offers, he posits that pricing is the major challenge.
Interview: Elcee McEdwards and Adebukola Oyedemi
Photography: Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko

What is the nature of your relationship with Yahoo and other portals?
As you know, we brought the yahoo online advertising for the first time to Nigeria, giving Nigerian brands the opportunity to target over 6 million unique users via online adverts. Within our media group, we also place ads on Facebook, YouTube and Google, amongst other international portals.
We have exclusive rights to represent Yahoo in sub-Saharan Africa. But within our business, we have built strong ties with other international portals and, within a few years, we have become the biggest digital marketing agency around.  Our people are the greatest asset; they are a passionate, honest and youthful team.
What strategies are you employing to harness the window of opportunities that the Nigerian market presents?
When we started, we segmented the market. Looked more closely to brands in telecom or financial services that will immediately understand, appreciate and have the right budget for us. It worked. Some of them include Zenith Bank, Skye Bank, Etisalat, Globacom, etc. But as a new strategy, we are now trying to win more customers to the business. We try to reduce the price and encourage them to pay what they can afford, giving them the minimum threshold and impressions.
We believe that the new media opportunity has not been fully tapped. A lot more is yet to be harnessed. Conventional media will still be very important, but some campaigns are better routed via digital media – mobile, search and display. We have also been involved in sponsorship and barter with some select brands.
Presently, we are planning another media parley for media managers/planners and brand managers soon, to give them detailed enlightenment on our offerings. Enlightenment is key. Brand managers must first understand and appreciate your product before they can mention it to clients.
For the SMEs, we had to review our strategies in the last one year so as to accommodate them. A lot of people call us and they say they want to be on Yahoo. They have a certain budget and we can put them on Yahoo with that budget. Our challenge is that if someone pays N3 million and another pays N5 million, we have issues when clients say that they are not seeing themselves as much as the other person. So we tend to enlighten our customers that if you put more money, you get more visibility and if you put less, you get less visibility. Some are saying, “Yes, even with the less visibility, I want it on Yahoo,” and that is because they are reaching seven million users in Nigeria. So we are welcoming more SMEs into our business. Whatever budget you have, we can run a campaign for you with at least N750, 000 and it will give you maximum impact. With that slim budget, you could use it for a month, you could use it for two weeks, and you could use it for one day. It all depends on the mileage or the impact you want to achieve.
 What is the success rate of online advertising in Nigeria?
It has been awesome. Awesome because most people have a Yahoo e-mail account and some companies even have it as their official e-mail account. So the target market is large and the patronage has been excellent. When people want to do online advertising, the first place they look at is yahoo, before looking at any other portal. In Nigeria, the online advertising market is an emerging market and it is growing.
What we did was to take a segment of the media that is not crowded (blue ocean strategy), a segment that we have reasonable competence in. Venturing into mainstream advertising when we came in would have been like fighting a war. And I’m not sure if we would have come out alive if we ventured into TV, radio, newspaper or outdoor.
Being that the use of the internet is relatively new in our market, online advertising is not something many people readily appreciate; so as it takes a while trying to convince the client that the online medium is cheaper and has wider mileage than these other media. We had to adopt different strategies. Now people are constantly calling us, saying they want to be on various internet portals, and they want us to craft on-line marketing strategies for them. So we have been meeting with various clients, developing their online media penetration plan on both local and international portals. In the last few months, we have worked closely with clients to develop their online marketing budgets for 2010.
Presently, some agencies are beginning to set up a one or two-man digital media teams but they also liaise with us to deliver effectively and efficiently to their clients. We encourage this, since no man is an island. Partnership works best if there is good understanding.
Having said that, I must add that strategy is very important in any business including online media buying. We need to understand the objective of the campaign and ascertain which digital medium will be most useful; is it display, mobile, search or a combination of some. These days, people just approach us and place request for rate cards for yahoo, facebook etc. But we always want to know the campaign they need it for. If they are willing to let us know, we direct them accordingly.
What are the strategic advantages of online advertising over and above traditional advertising?
Put simply, the web is too big to be ignored. The web is now so central to the way many of us live our lives that advertisers are forced to recognise the importance of this medium. Aside from size alone, there are a number of other reasons why online advertising is important.
Traceability
As Ogilvy famously said of television ads; “50% of advertising works, we just don’t know which 50%”. Online is different because we do know which ads work and which do not, because we can track them. This gives online the advantage over traditional advertising every time. We can test our advertising ideas and only roll out the successful ones, leading to far higher returns on investment than can be achieved by lucky guesses.
Targeting Again, online advertising can trump traditional media because online ads can be targeted. Why show the same advert to a 20 year old and a 60 year old viewer? The web allows us to deliver bespoke advertising to clients. Your website can be used to target messages that are tuned to the wants and needs of particular clients.
Cost Internet advertising is getting cheaper by the day. Small firms can reach global markets on the web and can even beat multinational conglomerates with multimillion naira budgets with a little effort.
Reach Not only is marketing to traditional potential customers cheaper, but the number of potential customers explodes exponentially for online advertising. A global reach is within everyone’s budget once they invest a little time and effort in online marketing. With tools such as ad words a small business with just one or two employees can create and manage marketing campaigns that are seen on the other sides of the world. In Nigeria, the internet penetration level is estimated at 10% (14million). Yahoo unique users are approximately 7 million from our last count. So you can imagine the instant reach a brand gets on the internet.
Innovation is what drives online advertising. Can you explain some of the innovations that are not being fully exploited in Nigeria?
Yes, rich Media is catching on very fast. Rich media can be downloadable or may be embedded in a webpage. If downloadable, it can be viewed or used offline with media players such as Real Networks’ RealPlayer, Microsoft Media Player, or Apple’s QuickTime, among others. The defining characteristic of rich media is that it exhibits dynamic motion. This motion may occur over time or in direct response to user interaction. With the rich media, you could see animations longer. It is more creative and more engaging. When the customer sees it, he says, “Wow! So this is happening.” You could actually see a lady dancing for several hours – that happened in one of our campaigns. Those are some of the reach media initiatives which online advertising offers. Video screening is also possible. Here, the advert you have on TV is put either on Yahoo or other portals, the same way it appears on TV. The only difference is that it is on the internet. We can put it up for you. But we worry about bandwidth issues because if you have a lower bandwidth you might not be able to use it. But we have a very good bandwidth; so, whatever advert you have on TV, we can put it online so that people can view it at the same time. 
What is the level of response to your marketing efforts among multinationals, local organizations and SMEs in Nigeria?
 We have gotten extremely encouraging responses from the multinationals.  So, anytime you look at the major portals like Yahoo, You-tube and Facebook, you see these adverts.
 So you represent YouTube?
We don’t represent them in an exclusive portfolio, but we leverage on our global contacts to also deploy campaigns for our clients. But if you go to YouTube and you see GLO, it is from us. We also do things with Google, but we do not have an exclusive relationship with them. The major international portals are what we bring to the Nigerian market.
 What about other local Nigerian brands?
As far as I’m concerned, I take Nigerian brands like the multinationals. For example, Nigerian Banks are big companies. During the IPO era, almost all the banks advertised on Yahoo and they appreciated it very well. Aside the banks, we have Unilever, Procter&Gamble, Etisalat and MTN, and those are multinationals. But Nigerian local conglomerates like Dangote Group have advertised on hotmail. This shows that local conglomerates have taken advantage of Yahoo. Generally, it requires the understanding of people running the media budgets to know that when you are targeting the youth market, you can track them better through online media.
Are there any case studies of campaigns in Nigeria that have achieved high level of success due to recourse to digital communication?
 When Etisalat came, they were trying to catch up with other telcos because they came a bit later than the others. The first thing they did was a campaign tagged ‘You Choose’. The ‘You Choose’ campaign was essentially to get people to subscribe by choosing any number they wanted, and reserving it. They used various internet portals because people had to register those numbers online. Since they used various internet portals, people clicked on and were able to register the numbers they wanted. That was one of the fastest medium that Etisalat employed and it was awesome. They got over three million subscribers registering to get those numbers. This actually took place within a couple of months. Though I can’t remember how long it lasted, it was quite successful. It was a good campaign because people said, “I want to register my number.” They saw it on Yahoo, on Facebook and on Hotmail, and they went ahead to register. The click-through rate was very high and alexia.com, which is an online service provider, was able to rate that as the top internet portal in Nigeria because of the traffic it generated.
Apart from Etisalat, is there any other company?
Yes we also have Globacom. Globacom is doing an SMS campaign that has to do with sending SMS and winning millions. People are constantly barging on this site because of this promotion which is an impressive one. Also, Nokia consistently uses reach media. It’s a certain ad called Expando. When you click the ad, you see a bigger picture of the usage of the product. They use that over and over again. There is a campaign like that presently going on for Nokia N97.
 Google has localized their products to offer products like Google Nigeria, Google Yoruba, Google Igbo etc. Does Yahoo have any of such plans?
 One of the things our relationship with Yahoo is going to do is to build the local market. As we drive the strategy in the market and we build more content and get to be a bit more familiar, Yahoo is going to develop a yahoo.com.ng. There is a real massive focus on the emerging markets and Nigeria is one of such emerging markets for Yahoo. Interestingly, it wasn’t so. But because of the relationship that we’ve built and the fact that our judicial system is getting very interesting, Yahoo is coming up with a .com.ng portal where you’ll source Nigerian related content only. What we still have is the .com, which is linked to America. So if you click yahoo.com what you see is information from America. But in the next few years we are going to have a .com.ng.
When exactly did your relationship with Yahoo and some of these internet portals start?
The relationship with Yahoo started in 2006, but we started full operations with them in 2007. Hotmail had started long before that. We started Hotmail earlier but the challenge we had was the number of users in Nigeria. Yahoo counts in millions, while Hotmail counts in thousands. So, if you tell someone to advertise strictly on Hotmail, he worries if the mileage is there. During one of our pitches in one of those days, someone called in a number of people and asked them if they had Hotmail accounts and they all said they did not. So the client said there is no need to advertise on Hotmail. We had to go and get the Yahoo deal, and we have that now. It was also in 2007 that we got YouTube and Facebook. One of the campaigns we have right now (Globacom) is currently running on YouTube and Facebook.
 What are some of the challenges you have had in marketing your services?
 I think pricing is a challenge. Convincing people is also hard for us. If we say, “pay us N3 million to be on Yahoo for one month,” what we are really saying to you is, “pay N100, 000 a day to be on Yahoo and you are reaching 7 million people minimum.” Now, a newspaper will ask you to pay N350, 000 a day to be on a page. If you multiply that by 30 days, that is what they are asking you to pay in a month, and it reaches only about 10,000 people a day and, may be, about a hundred thousand others who read as they pass by. With Yahoo, you are sure of reaching over seven million people with your advert. But it is hard to convince clients because the medium is new to media buyers. They need to be convinced that this is the number of people on Yahoo in a month; this is how much it cost in a month; and this is how much mileage you can get. But when they get that opportunity to be enlightened, they embrace it. Another challenge we have is that some think that when they make the payment, and they go to the site, they will immediately see that advert. They do not know that it refreshes; they do not know that some other adverts are on the queue and they all take turns. So, when I see it, you might not see it; and when you see it I might not see it. You don’t have to just go in there and expect that you’ll see an advert. 
The financial crisis has also affected us as a business. As a business, we depend on the marketing budget of our clients. So when there is a financial crisis, one of the first moves is to reduce marketing budget. In some instances, our 5% target is scrapped. But that also means we need to stay strategic and look for ways of not completely loosing out.
A major challenge for business in Nigeria is power. If it is sorted, you will be amazed how the economy will explode.
 Apart from pricing and the issues you have mentioned, are there other grey areas?
I think it all borders on appreciating the internet. I think it’s about pricing. I think it’s about bandwidth issues. It’s more about appreciating the impact of online and accepting the medium. We are working on acceptability. We are enlightening the media buyers and account managers regularly so they can see the value therein. In the last two weeks, we’ve been having meetings with media buyers and their clients in planning their online budget for next year. Power is key. We have offices in Cairo and Nairobi and the power situation in these places is quite commendable.
You sound like you have no competition.
We don’t have competition. Well, I think it’s all about strategy and focus. We adopted a blue ocean strategic approach to this business. Major advertising focus had always been on conventional media  radio, TV, outdoor and newspaper. We took to digital marketing first. If we wanted to compete, we would have come into conventional medium and be competing with all the major players there, who already have strong footholds. We would be competing with TV, we will be competing with radio, and we will be competing with outdoor. We don’t have the strength. So, we went into an area where we can understand very well and we are doing internet marketing. Our exposing this area to the market gives us an advantage. May be, tomorrow, other people will see the need to embrace this form of advertising. In fact, more agencies are setting up small digital arms and working closely with us to serve their clients. But we have an advantage because of our relationship with Yahoo and other global internet portals.
Do the internet portals have the same pricing?
No, they vary. Yahoo is the most expensive, followed by Facebook. Hotmail is as expensive as Facebook, but, of course, the mileage differs. Some people would prefer to be on Facebook, but they are the same price. We really don’t have a say over this because that is their pricing and we do what they tell you to do. They fix the price and, as we are commission agents, give us targets. When they give us the price, we determine what price is suitable for our market.
Now, let’s talk about you. How far have you gone in terms of education, background and all?
Interestingly, I’m doing something completely different from my background. This is strictly passion. I got my first degree in Economics from the University of Port Harcourt, and then was awarded a Chevening scholarship by the British Council to do a Masters in Financial Economics at the University of Sheffield. I finished the Sheffield program in 2002, came back to Nigeria and joined a bank. I worked in a few banks and left the banking sector in 2004, eventually venturing into entrepreneurship. When I ventured into entrepreneurship, I wanted to do oil and gas but the challenge I had was that when I wanted to get a contract with Shell, Shell will say bring your equipment. When I go the bank to help finance the equipment, the bank will say I should get the contract first. So it became a game of chicken and egg.  One will not give you the contract without you having the equipment and the other will not give you the equipment without the contract. So I left that field and started doing business development consultancy. That was how we struck a deal with Hotmail reps for Nigeria. Later on, we started pitching for Yahoo and we got it. So, I’m more of a financial economist. But I have leveraged on my understanding of Project Finance and Financial Economics to take business entrepreneurship in a different angle.
Do you have any training in advertising or marketing?
Yes, I have training in marketing. I have read widely on advertising and skewed in more to digital media. It doesn’t mean I don’t know what is happening on the other side, but to show competence and to be a bit focused I skewed into digital media.
How do you relax?
I work and I play. I play really hard. I play football every Wednesday and Sunday. I also club. I dance and socialize a lot and, for me, it’s all a function of networking.