Kenyan telecommunications operators cut their advertising budgets for the 2011 as price wars continue to hit companies' earnings, data collected and published by Ipsos Media on Wednesday revealed. According to their report, Safaricom, Airtel and Orange Kenya reduced their total ad budget to KES 7.5 billion last year in comparison to the KES 9.1 billion spent the previous year. However, Essar Kenya, the country's smallest, yet growing, operator, was the only company to increase its 2011 spending on advertising. The company nearly doubled its ad spending to KES 904.8 million, up from the KES 527 it spent the previous year. Ipsos did say that they expend ad spending to increase again in 2012, as companies hope price battles are behind them. “Safaricom, which controls 67.7 per cent of the market, cut its budget to KES 5 billion from KES 5.7 billion, while Airtel dropped to KES 1 billion from KES 1.9 billion,” the company said in its report. “Orange Kenya nearly halved its ad spend to KES 574.6 million from KES 1 billion. The cutbacks are a departure from the overall communications industry whose ad spend rose by a fifth to KES 11.1 billion from KES 9.3 billion in 2010. Total ad spend, excluding discounts, grew by a third to KES 65.4 billion from KES 49.2 billion. Safaricom remains the single biggest advertiser at KES 5 billion, followed by government agencies (KES 3¬.6 billion).” BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/BGWqM Tags: Ad, Kenya, Spending, Telecom Section: Business, East Africa, Tech
