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Kenya digital ad spend falls despite social media boom
Digital advertising, once seen as a resilient and high-growth segment, is increasingly being subjected to the same budget discipline as traditional media channels amid tightening corporate finances.
Kenya’s digital advertising spend is shrinking even as millions of users spend hours daily on social media, exposing a growing disconnect between audience attention and how brands are deploying marketing budgets in a shifting economy.
Official data shows that during the quarter ended December 2025, businesses cut digital advertising expenditure by 48.3 percent to Sh6.08 billion, down from Sh11.76 billion previously, marking one of the sharpest contractions in recent years.
The decline stands in contrast to rapidly expanding social media usage, where platforms continue to command a central role in communication, entertainment, and commerce across Kenya’s increasingly digital-first population.
Recent data from global insights platform DataReportal, for instance, shows that Kenya had 18.4 million social media user identities as of October last year, representing 31.8 percent of the total population.
A separate survey by global research firm GeoPoll had earlier revealed that 36 percent of respondents in Kenya spend more than six hours daily on social media, underlining the depth of engagement across platforms.
The figures point to a mismatch between where consumers spend their time and where advertisers are placing their money, raising concerns around the effectiveness and direction of digital marketing strategies.
Despite the spending decline, social media platforms remain deeply embedded in daily life, shaping how consumers discover products, interact with brands, and make purchasing decisions across multiple sectors of the economy.
The persistence of high engagement alongside falling ad spend suggests a structural shift, with brands increasingly rethinking how they extract value from digital audiences.
Industry analysts observe that part of the shift is driven by the changing nature of online influence, where traditional paid advertising is facing competition from more organic, content-driven engagement models built around creators and communities.
According to digital marketing strategist Janet Machuka, the rise of alternative promotional channels is reshaping how brands approach digital visibility and customer acquisition in an evolving media landscape.
“The rise of influencer marketing and content creators is chiefly the reason behind the dwindling advertising spends by businesses on digital platforms,” she notes.
“A drop of that scale signals hesitation. It reflects brands pulling back to rethink their priorities and question the return on investment they once associated with digital advertising,” she adds.
In her assessment, Ms Machuka maintains that brands are diverting budgets away from platform-based advertising towards partnerships with influencers who command loyal and highly engaged audiences across social platforms.
This shift is particularly pronounced among younger consumers who tend to respond more to peer recommendations and creator content than to traditional advertising formats embedded within social media feeds.
Chartered marketer and digital content strategist Nyandia Gachago attributes the slash in digital ad spending to a tech upgrade in the marketing model on Meta platforms, which are the country’s most popular social networks.
“The primary technical catalyst for this decline was Meta’s implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its ads via the Andromeda engine, which fundamentally changed the rules of the game for Facebook and Instagram, platforms that control 65 percent of the Kenyan market,” says Ms Nyandia.
“Andromeda moved away from manual audience selection to an AI that reads the ad creative itself to find viewers. Many local businesses, unable to produce the high volume of unique video assets required by the new AI, simply paused their spending to avoid burning their budgets on inefficient ads.”
Ms Machuka notes that the growing influence of content creators is gradually reshaping the economics of digital advertising, redistributing spending away from large platforms towards individual creators and smaller, niche digital ecosystems.
“It’s a shift from traditional ways of advertising to influencer and creator-driven strategies that have replaced ads since people now want conversations,” she says.
“People have become the centre of attention, and content has taken the lead. Conversations now shape perception, and brands are learning that visibility alone is no longer enough, and so they’re simply responding to the change in audience behaviour.”
Chartered marketer and digital content strategist Nyandia Gachago attributes the slash in digital ad spending to a tech upgrade in the marketing model on Meta platforms, which are the country’s most popular social networks.
“The primary technical catalyst for this decline was Meta’s implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its ads via the Andromeda engine, which fundamentally changed the rules of the game for Facebook and Instagram, platforms that control 65 percent of the Kenyan market,” says Ms Gachago.
“Andromeda moved away from manual audience selection to an AI that reads the ad creative itself to find viewers. Many local businesses, unable to produce the high volume of unique video assets required by the new AI, simply paused their spending to avoid burning their budgets on inefficient ads.”
The dip also came at a time the State was effecting a regulatory crackdown on high-frequency gambling ads, which Ms Gachago says removed one of the largest spending sectors from the ecosystem in a peak period.
“The ‘spay and pray’ method of digital advertising is officially over in Kenya. To succeed in 2026, brands must move toward AI-ready creative strategies, prioritising high-quality, diverse video content that feeds into these algorithms rather than fighting it,” she concludes.
At the same time, broader economic pressures are forcing companies to reassess marketing budgets, with many firms prioritising cost efficiency and measurable returns in an environment of constrained consumer spending.
Digital advertising, once seen as a resilient and high-growth segment, is increasingly being subjected to the same budget discipline as traditional media channels amid tightening corporate finances.
