Twice a year, KANTAR announces in a now traditional press release that it is making the AFRICASCOPE results on radio and television audiences and internet usage in eight French-speaking African countries available to its subscribers: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, and Senegal.
The results published in the press release for 2022 present overall indicators for television that vary very little from one wave to the next: 89.9% of Africans watched television daily, for an average of 4 hours and 22 minutes in 2022. This figure was 91% in 2020 and 89.9% in 2021… "So what?" you might ask. What does this say about the real situation of the media globally and in each country?
In radio, the cumulative audience level is lower but remains fairly stable from one wave to the next: 56% of individuals aged 15 and over listened to the radio daily, for an average of 1 hour and 59 minutes in 2022. This figure was 59% in the previous wave. Here too, the conclusion is not obvious. Can we say that radio is losing ground? Is the use of this medium changing?
Many agencies and advertisers do not necessarily have the means to subscribe to the study and have to make do with the information published by the channels and subscribing agencies without having any official reference point that a less succinct press release could provide.
This communication strategy, which for Kantar—as for Médiamétrie, which has the same approach—has the advantage of avoiding any controversy since there is no public indication, has several disadvantages: How can we understand the changing balance of power between channels and develop the advertising market in French-speaking Africa if there is not even an indicator of the audience share of channels and stations? Above all, how can we ensure that local media understand the value of these studies and subscribe to them if there is no way to promote their media?
When we know that the figures used to rank channels are available on Facebook, it is surprising that there is such secrecy surrounding the hierarchy of channels.
A few years ago, AFRICASCOPE published a TOP 5 ranking by country and overall for pan-African channels, enabling less basic analyses that had the advantage of showing the value of the data and how it could be used.
While it is understandable that KANTAR reserves the exclusivity of its data for its subscribers—i.e., those who finance the study—there is still significant room for improvement in the current press release, which could be made richer and more interesting.