Airtel Africa has unveiled a groundbreaking initiative for the continent's digital advertising landscape: Airtel Ads, Africa's first integrated Demand-Side Platform (DSP).

This innovative platform empowers businesses and agencies to streamline digital advertising by efficiently managing, purchasing, and optimizing ad inventory across multiple channels, all in real-time.

Powered by Intent.ai, Airtel Ads simplifies the process of purchasing advertising space for media agencies and businesses.

By integrating various tools and functionalities within a single platform, it enables informed ad placement decisions, offering a comprehensive solution for digital advertising management.

"We are excited to introduce Airtel Ads in Africa," stated Anthony Shiner, Chief Commercial Officer at Airtel Africa.

"This innovative platform will support advertisers and businesses to gain unprecedented control over their marketing campaigns, leveraging Airtel Africa's extensive customer base and world-class technology. Airtel Ads is a testament to our leadership in shaping the communications landscape in Africa, ensuring businesses are supported to achieve their objectives using data-first tools to inform their business decisions."

Airtel Ads leverages the vast reach of Airtel Africa, with over 150 million customers across the continent.

The platform uniquely utilizes data from both telecommunication services and mobile wallets, allowing it to target not only digitally active individuals but also those who haven't fully embraced the digital realm, including users of 2G and feature phones.

Additionally, the platform offers reach across various devices through its integrated Airtel Voice Reward Ads.

Understanding the challenges faced by organizations in ad performance, Airtel Ads seamlessly merges ad networks with Airtel Africa's own first-party telecommunications data.

This unified platform provides features like precise audience segmentation, a dedicated marketing team, data analytics with post-campaign support, and native language support.

Additionally, it offers access to over 260 bidding parameters and accepts payments in local African currencies.

Since its inception, Airtel Ads has already achieved impressive reach, garnering 27 billion weekly impressions, 23.5 million daily in-app impressions, and over 200 million daily SMS notifications with the potential for end-of-SMS tag messaging.

Airtel Ads is poised to revolutionize digital advertising in Africa, empowering businesses to reach a wider audience, make informed decisions, and achieve their marketing goals effectively.