Outdoor advertisers under the aegis Outdoor Advertising Agency of Nigeria (OAAN) have decried excessive bills they are being charged by signage agencies; saying, it has made their advert platform very costly.
President of OAAN, Chief Emmanuel Ajufo told newsmen in Lagos that signage agencies make outdoor advert practitioners pay for vacant sites when they are not occupied.
According to him, the signage law states that practitioners are supposed to pay from their earnings. “Which means until we earn, we cannot pay,” he said.
“Their argument was that when you rent out a house, whether the person packs in or not, he/she must pay rent, but we have also told them that the billboards are our houses and until somebody occupies them, we cannot have rent. We believe that if we continue to engage these signage agencies, then we can practice better,”
“In the past, our medium was the cheapest as even fashion designers could afford space on our billboard but today, you won’t see more than ten advertisers on our platform. The advertising budget is one and it is shared among various platforms, so if your own is too costly, advertisers have options, they can decide to go to the digital medium, which everybody is saying is growing.”
According to him, the signage agencies charge over N2miliion on a face of a unipole and that since they professionals and also businessmen, they sell the pole at a minimum of N5million to enable them make money to pay salaries and settle other bills.
He said, “Assuming they charge N500,000 for instance and we now have to sell for N1.5m or N2m; you will discover that people who cannot afford N5m will be able to afford N2m. we have been talking about the high rate, calling for a reduction. The worse situation is that even when the board is not occupied, we are still made to pay the same rate. That is the problem and when you don’t have that money, it is recorded as debt,” he lamented; noting that the unfriendly economic situation of the country is also not helping matters.
