Airtel Africa launches Airtel Ads to Support African Businesses

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L-R: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Intent.ai, Alexander Yesayan; Media Investment Lead, Airtel Africa, Danice King'Ori; Head of Brands, Airtel Africa, Nandu Buty; Chief Operations Officer, Intent.ai, Julia Tumasyan; and Group Chief Commercial Officer, Airtel Africa, Anthony Shiner; during the official launch of Airtel Ads powered by Intent.ai in Lagos recently. — L-R: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Intent.ai, Alexander Yesayan; Media Investment Lead, Airtel Africa, Danice King’Ori; Head of Brands, Airtel Africa, Nandu Buty; Chief Operations Officer, Intent.ai, Julia Tumasyan; and Group Chief Commercial Officer, Airtel Africa, Anthony Shiner; during the official launch of Airtel Ads powered by Intent.ai in Lagos recently.

By Olusegun Obisanya

Airtel Africa has launched Airtel Ads, 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.

It was launched on Thursday in Lagos, and attracted industry stakeholders, media practitioners among others.

Powered by Intent.ai, Airtel Ads, according to the network service provider, is 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 wallets.

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.

Speaking on the launch, Airtel Africa’s Chief Commercial Officer, Anthony Shiner said: “We are excited to introduce Airtel Ads in Africa. 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 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 company noted, 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.