Airtel Africa’s Chief Commercial Officer, Anthony Shiner
* Have been designed for media agencies and businesses, streamlining the process of purchasing advertising space
* The platform will leverage Airtel Africa’s extensive customer base of more than 150 million customers
* Utilising data from both telecommunications services and mobile money wallets
By Duncan Mlanjira
Airtel Africa has launched Airtel Ads, which is described as Africa’s first integrated Demand-Side Platform (DSP), aimed at empowering advertisers and agencies to efficiently manage, purchase, and optimize digital ad inventory across multiple ad exchanges in real-time.
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Powered by Intent.ai, Airtel Ads is said to have been designed for media agencies and businesses, streamlining the process of purchasing advertising space.
“This feature enables advertisers to make informed ad placement decisions by combining various tools and functionalities within a single platform and offers a comprehensive solution for digital advertising management.
“The platform will leverage Airtel Africa’s extensive customer base of more than 150 million customers, utilizing data from both telecommunications services and mobile money wallets,” says the Pan-African company in a press release.
Airtel Africa further reports that this approach “aims to not only target digitally engaged individuals but also include those traditionally excluded from the digital realm through its 2G and feature phone user base”.
“Additionally, through the integrated Airtel Voice Reward Ads, the platform has the capability to reach consumers on various devices.”
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Understanding the current limitations in ad performance for organisations, Airtel Ads aims “to seamlessly merge all ad networks with Airtel Africa’s first party telecommunications data”.
“It will provide a unified advertising platform with precise audience segmentation, a dedicated marketing team, data analytics with post-campaign support in addition to both native language support and access to 260+ bidding parameters.
The platform, powered by ai based brand safety tools, will also accept payments in local African currencies. Since its inception, the platform has achieved a weekly audience reach of 27 billion impressions, 23.5 million in-app daily impressions and over 200 million daily SMS notifications daily with end-of-SMS tag messaging potential.
At its launch, Airtel Africa’s Chief Commercial Officer, Anthony Shiner was quoted as saying: “This innovative platform will support advertisers and businesses to gain unprecedented control over their marketing campaigns, leveraging Airtel Africa’s extensive customer base and world class technology.
“Airtel Ads is a testament to our leadership in shaping the communications landscape in Africa, ensuring businesses are supported to achieve their objectives using data first tools to inform their business decisions.”
Airtel Africa offers an integrated suite of telecommunications solutions to its subscribers, including mobile voice and data services as well as mobile money services both nationally and internationally.
The Group aims to continue providing a simple and intuitive customer experience through streamlined customer journeys while Airtel Business Africa is a leading pan-African provider of connectivity and ICT services with an integrated portfolio of offerings to enterprises, governments, carriers, over-the-top (OTT) service providers, mobile network operators (MNOs), other wholesale players and small/medium businesses.
It offers a range of products and services, including voice and data solutions, submarine and terrestrial fiber cable capacities, collaboration, cloud, data centers, security, Internet of Things (IoT), network integration, managed services and enterprise mobility.
Through this diverse portfolio, Airtel Business Africa is pushing the boundaries in digital service delivery with a key focus on enhanced end-user experience, round-the-clock infrastructure availability and superior service quality.
Last week, Airtel Africa also announced a ground-breaking expansion of its service portfolio in collaboration with Cisco Systems to empower businesses to seamlessly embark on their digital transformation journey by offering Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solutions across various service platforms.
Cisco Systems is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate that develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software telecommunications equipment and other high-technology services and products.
The NaaS offerings include an array of services such as enhanced security, surveillance, connectivity, and Cloud solutions, all delivered through a secure cloud platform.
NaaS represents a paradigm shift in how organizations consume network infrastructure, allowing users to operate networks efficiently without the need to own, build, or maintain physical infrastructure.
This innovative approach reduces the challenges associated with traditional network models, including capital expenses, manual service provisioning, and lengthy issue resolution processes, said Airtel Africa in its statement last week.
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