Twitter Ban in Nigeria and it’s effect on Paid advertising.

Twitter Ban in Nigeria

Nigeria’s government announced on Friday that it was suspending Twitter “indefinitely” after the deletion of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Tweet, which violated Twitter’s “abusive behaviour” policy.

The article is not to put blame on anyone for the action; whether the government for banning Twitter or Twitter for deleting the tweet of the President of Nigeria.

As a digital marketer and a media buying professional, I write to express some of my observations since this announcement and how it has effective paid advertising and campaign.

The quick solution from the ban (VPN)

Since the ban, users have been on the lookout for ways to access the social media platform through the use of a VPN. The volume of online search conducted on the word “VPN” showed its popularity during the week according to the search tracking site, Trends Map.

Users who express their views on Twitter and other social platforms opted for VPNs to conceal their IP addresses, keeping internet service providers (ISPs) in the dark about their online activities and locations.

What is VPN?

VPNs are foremost, security tools that help to protect users from being hacked, tracked, monitored, or otherwise compromised. 

According to Kapersky, VPN stands for “Virtual Private Network” and describes the opportunity to establish a protected network connection when using public networks. VPNs encrypt your internet traffic and disguise your online identity. This makes it more difficult for third parties to track your activities online and steal data.

Nigerian’s switched to using VPN to access Twitter despite the ban in Nigeria

The effect of using VPN on paid advertising.

It’s important to know that when VPN is used, it disguises not only your online identity for Twitter but also for every other app on your phone.

So when you install a VPN, choose a preferred country, every app you access on your phone is seen as coming from that country. For example, if you choose Singapore as your preferred country, when you tweet or perform any other action online, it is seen as coming from that country. Which is why you could access Twitter for example in Nigeria even though it is ban.

The effect of this is massive on campaign.

In paid advertising one of the things that is done when targeting is location targeting which is crucial to achieving any results on any paid advertising.

Let me break it for you. If you advertise and target Nigeria, the effect is that anyone who uses VPN, and has chosen another country won’t served your ad even though they are in Nigeria. For those that use VPN, have you observed that many ads you see when scrolling through social media are not from Nigeria? Let me know your experience in the comment section below.

This therefore will affect most Twitter users who uses VPN to be reached on paid ads.

What’s the solution?

Let me have you thought in the comment section