Patterns of Information Products Advertising in Newspaper Media in Nigeria

Abstract

The nature and contents of adverts of types of products and services may be used to understand the evolution of different product and services markets in a country. This was the main objective of this study, which analysed the nature of adverts of information products and services in
Nigerian newspaper media. A secondary objective was to understand the advertising strategies that were used. Data were collected through the content analysis of two Nigerian newspapers that circulate entensively in Nigeria – the Guardian and the Nigerian Tribune. Data were collected from all the editions of the newspapers published during 2006 and 2007. The study revealed that conduit information products and services were much more frequently advertised in the newspapers than content information products and services. This illustrates the relative underdevelopment of content information products and services subsectors of the Nigerian information industry compared to the conduit information products and services sub-sectors. The majority of the adverts bought small spaces in the newspapers, except for the majority of adverts of conduit information services (e.g. mobile telecom services) which bought relatively bigger spaces, and probably because of the high growth and profitability of the markets for such services. The majority of the adverts aimed at presenting a combination of factual information and image, but the use of other message delivery strategies such as message tone, message icons and moneyoff strategies was not common. The study recommended that Nigerian governments pursue complementary information industry development strategies that pay adequate attention to growing both the conduit and content sectors of the industry.

Keywords: Content information products, conduit information
services, advertising, newspapers, information industry, Nigeria