Media Agencies Risk Irrelevance Without New Value Proposition, Expert Warns

Media agencies risk becoming increasingly irrelevant if they continue to depend largely on media buying and placement, Group Chief Executive Officer and Group Chief Creative Officer of X3M Ideas, Steve Babaeko, has warned.

Babaeko urged media practitioners to redefine their value proposition by focusing on data ownership, strategic interpretation and a deeper understanding of African consumers as artificial intelligence (AI), automation and programmatic advertising reshape the industry.

He spoke while delivering the keynote address at the 2026 Annual General Meeting of the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN), held on the theme, “Monetising Tomorrow: Outpacing Disruption, Capturing Growth in the Next Era of Media.”

According to him, the traditional media-buying model is under increasing pressure as programmatic advertising, self-service platforms and AI-powered systems automate campaign planning, audience selection, budgeting and placement.

He said agencies could not remain competitive by attempting to outperform machines at tasks that technology can execute faster and more cheaply.

“If the race is who can execute the buy faster and cheaper, we have already lost,” Babaeko said, urging practitioners to move beyond competing on the efficiency of transactions and instead build capabilities and assets that global technology platforms do not own.

He identified deep knowledge of Nigerian and African consumers as one of the industry’s strongest competitive advantages, noting that global technology platforms, despite their extensive data and sophisticated algorithms, cannot fully capture the realities of Nigeria’s largely informal economy.

Babaeko pointed to consumers whose media habits extend beyond conventional digital metrics, including market women who listen to radio, young Nigerians influenced by conversations in commercial buses, WhatsApp networks, neighbourhood influencers, religious announcements and other community-based channels.

He argued that a significant portion of Nigeria’s economic activity remains outside the datasets and attribution models that increasingly drive digital advertising decisions.

“The machine can only optimise what it can see,” he said, describing the largely unmeasured segment of Nigeria’s consumer economy as an opportunity for local media practitioners.

Babaeko therefore called for what he described as a “second independence” for Nigeria’s media industry, centred on owning local audience intelligence and developing indigenous approaches to measuring consumer behaviour rather than relying entirely on imported metrics and frameworks.

He said the first independence came when media planning evolved from guesswork into a specialised discipline, with MIPAN playing a significant role in that transformation.

According to him, the next phase should focus on independence of thought and the ability of Nigerian media practitioners to define value, audience and consumer behaviour on their own terms.

He consequently urged MIPAN to spearhead the development of an African audience intelligence and measurement system capable of providing a more comprehensive understanding of Nigerian consumers.

“Right now, we make our decisions using a mirror the platforms hold up for us, and they decide what the mirror shows,” he said, stressing the need for the industry to develop “our own measurement” and “our own currency of attention.”

The X3M Ideas boss also challenged agencies to reconsider how they charge clients, arguing that practitioners should place greater value on strategic judgement and interpretation rather than pricing primarily for the execution of media transactions.

“Stop pricing yourself as the hand that places the ad. Price yourself as the mind that decides it was worth placing at all,” he said.

On AI, Babaeko advised media professionals to treat the technology as an assistant rather than a replacement for human expertise.

He urged practitioners to deploy AI for arithmetic, optimisation and repetitive tasks while redirecting human talent towards understanding consumers, culture and context.

He argued that these areas require human insight and a nuanced understanding of local realities that machines cannot easily replicate.

Babaeko also cautioned against allowing global technology platforms to determine what constitutes “premium” media in Nigeria.

He said local radio, street-level communication, indigenous languages and other traditional channels should not automatically be regarded as inferior to digital advertising inventory.

Instead, he urged media practitioners to assess and properly value local platforms based on their ability to influence real consumer behaviour.

The creative executive further called for greater collaboration among MIPAN members, noting that the industry’s biggest competition was increasingly coming from trillion-dollar technology platforms rather than individual agencies.

He said collective action through MIPAN could provide the industry with the strategic advantage needed to develop capabilities that individual agencies might struggle to finance on their own.

Babaeko concluded by urging media practitioners to stop seeking permission to command premium value and instead build capabilities that global platforms cannot easily replicate.

“The next era belongs to whoever owns meaning in a world drowning in transaction,” he said, insisting that deep knowledge of Nigerian and African consumers would remain a valuable asset even as other aspects of media execution become increasingly automated.