AdTech Conversations with Tunji Adelekan
We caught up with Tunji Adelekan over the weekend. He was full of life and optimism just as ever. His perspective on the digital advertising landscape has improved from appreciation of local nuances to an Africa wide perspective. The brief conversation also showed a reflection on the role of infrastructure on the AdTech and performance marketing industry in Nigeria.
According to Fortune Business Insights, “the global AdTech market size was valued at USD 783.46 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow from USD 876.21 billion in 2024 to USD 2,547.17 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 14.3% during the forecast period”. North America dominates the industry, while the major technology players that dominate the industry include; Google, Meta, Amazon Web Services and Criteo. Apparently, the impact of LLM driven platforms on search and AdTech is yet to be captured.
In Nigeria, the size of the AdTech industry is not captured. According to PWC, the overall advertising industry is valued at N605.2 billion in 2023, and forecasted to grow to N893 billion by 2028. Digital advertising has been projected to reach US$289.1 m in 2025 by Statista, with video advertising taking about $121.7m of that figure by 2025.
In view of the projections and other developments such as artificial intelligence and the creator economy, we had a brief conversation with Adetunji Adelekan of MediaCom, an industry veteran and performance marketing leader who has led media planning and strategy teams since 2010.
How It Started
The conversation started with musings over the state of performance marketing in Nigeria, especially with a review of how performance marketing platforms have been introduced overtime, as well as the approach of brands towards performance marketing.
Tunji highlighted the role of platforms like Google Ad Network, Facebook and alternative platforms such as Eskimi and mobile publishers that enable and tracking abilities across devices; tablet, mobile, and web, as well as cross-device tracking which enables brands and clients track channels that provide the best results. Technologies such as programmatic with their real-time bidding (RTB) mechanisms have also come in handy to support investment approaches to manage digital media advertising. Investment approaches refer to management of advertising budget using investment approaches, where amounts invested in advertising is evaluated based on the return on investment and other investment metrics adapted to advertising.
AdTech: Africa in Context
The development of AdTech in Africa reared its interesting head early in the conversation, where Tunji was quick to point out that both Kenya and South Africa are better performing markets in relation to AdTech and performance marketing. Well, Nigeria is lagging behind, relatively, due to challenges such as disposable income and internet usage intensity, but our editor- Babatope was quick to point out the possibility of human capital affecting consumption patterns of services, including internet economy products. We note that Nigeria’s population adds up in physical trade, but opportunities for digital conversions are dependent on general technological, economic and social improvements.
Artificial Intelligence Enters the Fray
A major and critical issue that was also discussed is the rising role of artificial intelligence in guiding client decisions to invest in performance marketing. Here, Tunji averred that AI in here to stay and will no doubt determine the success of performance marketing campaigns. Artificial Intelligence in his opinion will affect campaign planning projects, budget optimization, predictive modelling based on existing datasets. And what is the immediate implication of this for advertising and marketing organizations?
Artificial Intelligence: Quality Dataset as A Source of Competitive Advantage
Basically, organizations that have done a good job of preserving data and ensuring data quality are bound to reap the rewards of open-source LLM models as well as Agentic AI applications that can be used to build vertical LLM models.
When we asked about the most useful technique for performance marketers, Tunji mentioned that A/B testing has proven to be the most effective technique so far, with adverts designed in pidgin performing better those done in plain English. It was a great wonder according to Tunji.
Most Critical Factor Affecting Performance Marketing in 2025?
“What is the single most important factor, that will transform the performance marketing industry in 2025?”, the BB Buzz team asked. Your guess is as good as ours, he answered; artificial intelligence. Moving on.
Innovation and Opportunities: Human Capital and Enabling Environment for Performance Marketing Development
Finally, we tried to capture his thoughts on the opportunities for performance marketers in 2025, Tunji was unequivocal in saying that “Growth Marketing” remains an area to focus on. However, the challenges of human capital management and enabling business environment still remains an albatross. For instance, growth teams in Nigeria are short staffed, and a typical team member works like an “Octopus”; that is does too many things. Compared with European countries where growth teams include specialists in Paid Media, Data Science, Data Analysis, Pricing Experts and so on.
This situation has led many experienced and good hands to seek greener pastures in countries like Malta, Germany and so on. Nigerian startups and businesses will need to find a way to retain their employees, otherwise, innovation and development of the AdTech ecosystem may prove difficult to develop into global standards.
