It has now been nine years since you launched your digital business. Where are you today?
Gramica is a digital advertising agency that supports more than 200 premium media outlets in French-speaking Africa and the Indian Ocean. We offer a wide range of formats—banners, videos, interactive rich media—which we monetize through direct sales and programmatic advertising.
Over time, we have expanded our scope of action to support our clients in all their media purchases. In display advertising, we operate through three levers:
- our premium advertising agency Gramica,
- programmatic buying,
- and our expertise in Google Ads.
We also have expertise in media buying on social media, particularly on Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok, targeting the African diaspora in particular.
Our expertise now enables us to design truly tailor-made digital strategies, thanks to a creative studio that is both imaginative and visionary. I like to say that we are "good students": rigorous in terms of performance and tracking, but always with a touch of madness that makes all the difference.
What types of clients are you working with today?
We work with both large agencies and advertisers directly. What sets us apart is our ability to meet the needs of advertisers wishing to target specific audiences: in French-speaking Africa, the Indian Ocean region, or within the African diaspora, whether in the sub-region or in Europe.
Our clients operate in a variety of sectors: banking, insurance, FMCG, money transfers, tourism, telecommunications, and awareness campaigns. We prioritize long-term partnerships, as our strength lies in our ability to constantly reinvent ourselves and challenge the status quo.
Every quarter, we launch new interactive formats for display advertising, we stay at the forefront of algorithm developments, and we meticulously analyze each campaign to get the most out of it. For each new brief, we start with a blank page, while capitalizing on the experience we have accumulated in the relevant sector.
What were the major milestones in your development?
I launched Gramica nine years ago, starting out on my own. For a year, I traveled to many countries in Africa to meet one by one with the publishers we now work with. A year later, I hired my first employee—who is still with us today—and now Gramica has 15 employees based in Abidjan.
I don't make fixed plans: I move forward at the pace of my market and the needs of our customers. In a digital advertising agency, nothing can ever be taken for granted because we operate between publishers and advertisers; we therefore have to constantly adapt and find solutions. When Gramica was launched, we offered three purchasing systems: our premium agency, programmatic purchasing, and Google Ads. We quickly developed solid expertise in media purchasing on social networks to meet market expectations.
In 2019, we created G-Studio, an in-house studio that supports our clients with creative projects and has also worked on our new graphic identity. We are gradually unveiling this new image across our social media channels.
Our expansion into the Indian Ocean in 2020 marked a key milestone: it enabled us to broaden our scope to include a wide variety of markets rich in opportunities. Today, Gramica operates in more than 20 countries.
With this new dynamic, we are reaffirming our position: Gramica remains an expert digital advertising agency, committed to working alongside its clients to deliver performance.
You place a lot of emphasis on the concept of performance…
This is our true strength. Each campaign starts with specific objectives, whether in terms of clicks, leads, or sales, and we are committed to achieving them. We provide rigorous monitoring through detailed monthly reports, including performance indicators and return on investment.
Whatever the sector—construction, hospitality, money transfers, sports betting—we guarantee measurable results. In our business, we are judged every month on our ability to deliver the expected performance: that leaves us no room for error.
And what role does pure management play in your business?
Advertising sales remain at the heart of our business, and above all at the heart of our raison d'être. Without our publishers, there would be no advertising sales, and therefore no Gramica. Our primary role is to work in their interests, supporting them in promoting their spaces and content.
For each campaign, we ensure that at least 30% of the budget is invested in our network of premium African websites. We then arbitrate with other levers—social media, programmatic advertising, or other media—to best meet our clients' objectives.
For agencies, we act as an inventory provider: they entrust us with a budget, we select the most relevant media, we ensure distribution, and we manage payments to publishers. It's a simple, effective model that relies above all on a solid partnership with our publishers.
There is a lot of talk about agencies using artificial intelligence tools. What role does AI play at Gramica?
At Gramica, responding to a call for tenders remains above all a task of human thought and creativity. It is, as I like to say, "homemade brain juice." We never use artificial intelligence to generate ideas or design strategies.
On the other hand, AI can be a tool that helps us work more efficiently: we use it to proofread, structure, and format our documents, and for translations, particularly into local languages such as Malagasy, Wolof, and Bambara. It also helps us quickly summarize the latest news about a country or prospect before responding to a call for tenders.
When it comes to visual creation, we make a clear choice: we do not use AI. The visuals generated by these tools lack authenticity, the faces are too smooth, and the images too uniform. I prefer to invest in a photo shoot to guarantee an original result that is true to our values.
Any final thoughts?
Yes, I would like to emphasize that I am fortunate to have a loyal team—some of whom have been with me since the very beginning—who are motivated and enthusiastic about the diversity of the projects we work on. At Gramica, there's never a dull moment!
Our goal has never been to sell at any cost. What matters to us is building lasting relationships, so that our clients want to come back. We don't just sell expertise: we provide a detailed understanding of needs, precise audience targeting, and concrete, measurable results.