Media agencies that continue to depend heavily on media buying and placement risk losing their relevance in an industry increasingly shaped by automation and artificial intelligence, Group Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of X3M Ideas, Steve Babaeko, has warned.
Babaeko said the future of the media industry would depend less on the ability to execute transactions and more on agencies’ capacity to own data, interpret audience intelligence and develop a deeper understanding of African consumers.
He made the submission while delivering the keynote address at the 2026 Annual General Meeting of the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN), where he challenged practitioners to rethink their business models and identify new ways of monetising opportunities in a rapidly changing media landscape.
Speaking on the theme, “Monetizing Tomorrow: Outpacing Disruption, Capturing Growth in the Next Era of Media,” Babaeko noted that the traditional media-buying model was coming under increasing pressure as programmatic advertising, self-service platforms and AI-powered systems take over several functions previously handled by agencies.
These technologies, he explained, are increasingly capable of automating campaign planning, audience selection, budgeting and media placement, making it difficult for agencies to compete if their primary value remains transaction execution.
According to him, practitioners should not attempt to compete with machines on tasks that technology can perform faster and at lower cost.
“If the race is who can execute the buy faster and cheaper, we have already lost,” Babaeko said.
He argued that rather than running faster on what he described as the platforms’ “treadmill”, media agencies should invest in capabilities and assets that global technology platforms do not own.
Africa’s Consumer Knowledge Advantage
Babaeko identified deep knowledge of Nigerian and African consumers as one of the industry’s most valuable competitive advantages, particularly because a substantial part of economic activity and consumer behaviour in Nigeria remains informal and difficult to capture through conventional digital datasets.
He explained that global technology companies may possess sophisticated algorithms and enormous volumes of data, but their systems cannot always reflect the realities of everyday Nigerian life.
He cited market women who listen to radio, young Nigerians whose purchasing decisions are influenced by conversations in commercial buses, and communities where WhatsApp groups, neighbourhood influencers, religious announcements and other informal networks shape opinions and behaviour.
Such interactions, he noted, often fall outside the conventional metrics used by digital advertising platforms.
“The machine can only optimise what it can see,” Babaeko said, describing the portions of Nigeria’s consumer economy that remain poorly measured as an opportunity for local media practitioners to establish greater value.
He called for what he termed a “second independence” for Nigeria’s media industry, saying the next phase of development should involve ownership of local audience intelligence and the creation of indigenous approaches to measuring consumer behaviour.
According to him, the first major transformation occurred when media planning moved away from guesswork and became a specialised professional discipline, with MIPAN contributing significantly to that evolution.
The next stage, he said, should be characterised by independence of thought and the ability of Nigerian practitioners to define audiences, consumer behaviour and value using local realities rather than relying exclusively on imported measurements and frameworks.
Call for African Audience Measurement System
Babaeko urged MIPAN to take the lead in developing an African audience intelligence and measurement system capable of providing a broader and more accurate understanding of Nigerian consumers.
He criticised the industry’s heavy dependence on measurement systems controlled by global technology platforms, arguing that practitioners should develop their own tools for understanding and valuing consumer attention.
“Right now we make our decisions using a mirror the platforms hold up for us, and they decide what the mirror shows,” he said.
He called for the development of “our own measurement” and “our own currency of attention,” stressing that such systems would give African media practitioners greater control over how audiences and media value are defined.
Babaeko also challenged agencies to rethink their approach to charging clients. Rather than pricing themselves primarily for executing media transactions, he said agencies should place a premium on the strategic judgement, intelligence and interpretation that inform those decisions.
“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.
AI Should Assist, Not Replace Human Expertise
On artificial intelligence, Babaeko advised media professionals to see the technology as an assistant rather than a replacement for human expertise.
He said agencies could deploy AI for arithmetic, optimisation and repetitive processes while allowing human professionals to concentrate on consumer understanding, culture, creativity and context.
These areas, he argued, require a depth of human understanding that cannot be reduced entirely to algorithms or automated systems.
He also warned practitioners against accepting global technology platforms’ definition of what constitutes “premium” media in Nigeria.
According to him, local radio, street-level communication, indigenous languages and other traditional channels should not automatically be regarded as inferior simply because they do not fit neatly into the digital advertising ecosystem.
Instead, media professionals should assess local platforms according to their ability to influence actual consumer behaviour and ensure that such influence is properly measured and valued.
Collaboration Key to Industry Survival
Babaeko further called for stronger collaboration among MIPAN members, noting that the most significant competitive pressure facing the industry was no longer necessarily from individual agencies.
Rather, he said, practitioners were increasingly competing against trillion-dollar global technology platforms with vast financial resources, technological capabilities and access to enormous datasets.
He described collective action through MIPAN as a strategic advantage that could allow Nigerian media agencies to develop research, measurement and audience intelligence capabilities that individual firms might struggle to finance independently.
Babaeko therefore urged practitioners to move away from competing solely for transactions and focus on building assets, knowledge and capabilities that would remain valuable even as media execution becomes increasingly automated.
He concluded that agencies should stop seeking permission from global platforms to command premium value and instead develop expertise that is difficult to replicate.
“The next era belongs to whoever owns meaning in a world drowning in transaction,” he said.
For Babaeko, the enduring advantage for Nigerian and African media practitioners lies in their ability to understand the people behind the numbers — an asset he maintained would continue to appreciate even as technology transforms how media is bought, measured and delivered.