Firms invest Sh20bn on brand building in six months

“These events are being watched closely internationally and remain a major threat to economic recovery,” Renaldo D’ Souza, an analyst at Genghis Capital, said in an earlier interview.

Media buyers expect advertising spend to continue growing in the remaining part of the year, buoyed by aggressive marketing of back-to-school promotions and heavy promotions typical of the festive fourth quarter season.

For media firms, the increased ad spend is set to translate into higher earnings this year as heavy discounting among the competitors eases.

Mr Joe Otin, the media monitoring director at Synovate, said the firm has seen a slowdown in discounting that has been rampant among the 97 radio stations vying for a share of the advertising spend.

“Discounting and offering other value-added services has been eroding earnings from radio and TV commercials but print is less affected,” he said.

He added that in the period under review, Synovate for the first time factored in notices when capturing advertising revenues for the print media.

As a result, the share of print advertising is set to grow unlike in the previous years when only display ads were used.

In the first half, for instance, the share of print revenues was 16 per cent or Sh3.2 billion, up from 14 per cent or Sh4.4 billion for the whole of last year.

Radio increased its share by one percentage point to stand at 52 per cent while the TV segment dropped from 34 per cent to 31 per cent.