Monday Ashibogwu Gives Tips To Online Publishers On How To Monetise Digital Media Practice
The ongoing Annual General Conference of the Guild of Corporate Publishers (GOCOP) has witnessed more empowerment of members through specialised trainings, one of which is titled ‘Monetisation of Digital Media Business; Earning Beyond Advertising and Sponsored Content’ at Radisson Blu in Ikeja, Lagos Nigeria.
The topic was presented by Dr Monday Ashibogwu, Group Chief Executive Officer, Billsbox Services Limited and Publisher, Quick News Africa.
He alerted publishers that advertising built on pageviews was getting weak as audiences have moved to other platforms. He attributed the recent trend to the increased use of search and artificial intelligence tools to answer readers before they reach a publisher’s website.
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He however argued that Nigerian online publishers hold an asset that advertising undervalues, which he named as unusually high audience trust, adding that the task is to convert this trust into income.
He examined six non-advertising revenue streams (membership, events, training, data and intelligence, licensing, and products and services) through global, African and Nigerian cases.
Two years ago, he pointed out that GOCOP was keen to learn about publisher revenue, saying there is now a worrying shift.
He said: “First, audiences are leaving the publishers’ front doors, as confirmed by the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026, which surveyed nearly 100,000 people in 48 markets.
“The next is that the traffic publishers relied on is thinning. He said analytics covering more than 2,500 news sites show that referrals from Google search fell by a third worldwide between November 2024 and November 2025. Publishers expect a further fall of 43 per cent within three years.”
The third, he said, is that money follows the audience; hence, an advertising model built on pageviews cannot hold when the pageview is captured by a platform, or when an artificial intelligence summary answers the reader before that reader ever reaches the publisher.
He pointed to a warning by the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) of a possible media collapse. He said Nigeria feels the decline seriously.
He also pointed to options, one of which he mentioned as reader revenue through membership, mentioning a foreign newspaper that has 1.4m readership membership, earning over 126 million pounds in the year ending March 2026.
He also mentioned ‘events and convening power’ as another prosperous stream of revenue available to publishers.
Dr Ashibogwu said: “The calendar is on our side. With the 2027 general elections approaching, there is a ready demand for candidate debates, policy dialogues and town halls at state level. A credible online publisher is well placed to host them, on one condition: every participant is charged on the same published terms, so that the platform is never for sale to one side.”
He mentioned stream four as training and service services, while stream five is data, research, and intelligence. He reminded publishers that have covered beats over the years to note that they were sitting on data mines.
On licensing and collective bargaining, he raised an alarm, saying some other entities were using content by Nigerian publishers to make their own money. “In July this year, following a joint petition by the Nigerian Press Organisation, of which GOCOP is a member, the President directed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to investigate how Meta, Alphabet, X and the generative AI companies use Nigerian news content.
“We should not wait for the outcome before we prepare. We need agreed data on our traffic, our archives, and our costs, and a fair formula for sharing whatever is won among 127 members, large and small.”
He also mentioned products, services, and commerce.
