Consider a scenario: I am a potential advertiser in negotiations with a broadcaster media sales agent, and I ask this simple question: “How many people actually watched that programme last night?” What will the ready answer be?
In my opinion, for most markets on the continent, the honest answer is that nobody truly knows!
Across Africa, measurement panels, where they exist at all, only always cover a few thousand urban households standing in for hundreds of millions of viewers. In research after research (many of which have been conducted by BMA), it is evidenced that often, whole regions, languages and peoples go uncounted or unaccounted for – even when they as audiences do exist and have actually consumed the content.
Now let’s reflect on what this costs in practice. Airtime sells below its real value because the seller cannot evidence the audience. Carriage and rights negotiations are fought without numbers. Popular local programmes get cancelled because their true audiences are invisible, while commissioning decisions – where they are actually practised – lean on instinct and belief.
The good news, however, is that the old excuses are expiring.
The days are gone when credible measurement meant expensive people-meter panels that only the richest markets could sustain. Nowadays, return-path data from set-top boxes and smart TVs, streaming analytics, mobile viewing data, and the AI models that knit these sources together can produce audience pictures that are bigger, faster, and way cheaper than the classic panel ever was.
Also right now, deployment of artificial intelligence will help do the heavy lifting – cleaning messy data, filling gaps, matching viewing across platforms, and turning millions of signals into credible numbers for advertisers.
A little bit of caution here. I am not in any way suggesting that tech alone is the silver bullet that will solve all. Along with technology, the industry must work assiduously to implement a shared standard, adopt independent verification protocols and, above all, set up a pan-African joint-industry measurement body – the kind of body that has transformed advertising markets elsewhere.
And that table is being set. Audience measurement, analytics and the money that follows them are squarely on the agenda at the Broadcasters Convention – West Africa 2026 in Accra this September, where broadcasters, advertisers, agencies and measurement innovators will get into the practical detail of what a modern audience currency for our markets should look like.
That African audiences are enormous, loyal and growing is no news. They always have been. What has been missing is the proof, and with it the price.
Let’s close the measurement gap for real. The money will follow the numbers. It always does.
This article is written by Benjamin Pius (Publisher @ BMA) to support the upcoming Broadcasters Convention – West Africa 2026, 22–23 September 2026, Labadi Beach Hotel, Accra, Ghana.
Register to attend: wab-africa.broadcastingandmedia.net
