Far from the picture of regulatory overreach and investor flight painted in ADVAN’s open letter to President Bola Tinubu recently, Nigeria’s advertising industry has been growing, and the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) has the independent research to prove it.

In a statement issued recently, ARCON’s Director-General, Dr. Olalekan Fadolapo, pushed back against the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN)’s claim that its reforms have triggered a decline in advertising spend and caused companies to exit the Nigerian market.

The regulator said the data tells an entirely different story from the claim of the body, adding that industry expansion, debt resolution, job creation, and improved contributions to Nigeria’s GDP all prove the claims to be false.

Central to ARCON’s counternarrative is an independent research project it commissioned in collaboration with the Heads of Advertising Sectoral Group (HASG).

The regulator engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the world’s most recognised global professional services firms to conduct a comprehensive study of advertising industry spend and its contribution to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product.