Uganda’s top online publishers under their umbrella body, the Online Media Publishers Association (OMPA) have teamed up to weed out the problem of losing significant amounts of revenue to foreign firms.
Local digital businesses who enjoy a combined audience/reach of 8 million people have taken a hard stand against being bypassed during online media space as the money they pay to Google makes the country lose forex and is not taxes by companies like Stanbic Bank, Vodafone Uganda, Ayo Uganda, Smile Communications, Kilimall, Jumia, BeForward, NSSF, Pepsi, Coca Cola among others.
The initiative to block all advert placements from local advertisers on their websites was announced on Friday by OMPA President Giles Muhame.
Google and Facebook dominate the digital ad industry, accounting for more than two-thirds of all spending. Analysts estimate more than one-third of all global ad spending goes to digital now and will rise to nearly half by 2020. In this marketplace, Google is the biggest winner of all, garnering ninety percent of its revenue from ads.
But this dominance has led to steadily increasing concern that news website owners and publishers themselves haven’t been able to independently evaluate Google’s reports of how much they should earn from ads performing on Google.
Deep into the rabbit hole
According to a statement confirming the blockage, OMPA said that the association “reached this unanimous decision in the interest of safeguarding members’ commercial interests in light of a growing trend by local companies to redirect digital advertising to ad serving operations, notably, Google Ads. This has led to a loss of significant amounts of revenue for OMPA members. Similarly, however, all other alternative ad serving operations will also be blocked.”
It added that the local organizations henceforth will not be able to have their services/products displayed on Ugandan OMPA member websites if their advertisements are channeled through Google or other ad servers.
But, increasingly, only foreign ads served by Google (and similar operations) will be allowed to display on members’ websites thus stifling the online presence of Ugandan products if OMPA’s demands are not met.
The publishers who subscribe to the Online Media Association include; theugandan.com.ug, www.chimpreports.com, guru8.net, howwe.biz, eagle.co.ug, xlusive.co.ug, trumpetnews.co.ug, kampalascene.com, campusbee.ug, watchdog.co.ug, bigeye.ug, pctechmag.com, www.kawowo.com, shespell.com, www.theceomagazine-ug.com, theinvestigatornews.com, www.showbizuganda.com muwado.com and theinsider.ug
Evidence of the OMPA’s evolution abounds: It is their belief as an association that this will lead to a mutually beneficial relationship where indigenous websites are empowered to grow thanks to the advertising revenue from local partners while at the same time delivering an even greater value for local advertisers by reaching wider audiences.
“We need such advertising revenue, a growing online publishing industry gets the much needed resources to grow, employ Ugandans and engage youths in gainful employment,” OMPA leader, Muhame said.
In a separate but related reevaluation of the local digital media ecosystem, members will in future consider blocking public relations stories from which most budgets of advertising agencies in Kampala survive.
Unsurprisingly today, data from Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) shows that about 10% of the country’s advertising industry worth Shs600 billion is in online advertising, a big chunk of which goes to Google.
