Tech giant Google has reaffirmed its commitment to driving digital innovation in Africa through two events geared toward equipping Nigerian media professionals with advanced digital tools to drive advertising revenue and enhance newsroom efficiency.
The first event, Google Ad Manager Academy 3.0, which took place at the Google office in Ikoyi, Lagos, brought together media practitioners from across Sub-Saharan Africa in a hybrid format, combining in-person and virtual elements.
The event focused on helping publishers fully unlock the potential of Google Ad Manager, understand new consumer insights, leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning, and implement yield optimization techniques to boost earnings across mobile and web platforms.
The second event, Publisher Day NG 2025, featured a hands-on workshop that introduced participants to Google’s suite of newsroom tools, such as News Consumer Insights 3.0, Gemini for News, NotebookLM, and Pinpoint.
The sessions were designed to demonstrate how these innovations can enhance content research, audience engagement, and ad performance.
Speaking during the event, Onyinyechi “Nini” Eze, Strategic Partner Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at Google, reflected on the growing interest among Nigerian news organisations in programmatic advertising.
Her words, “The Google Ad Monetization journey has been interesting for me. I’ve been in Google for three years and we had the Google Ad Manager Academy 3.0. What I found interesting is the number of news companies and news agencies that are now coming on board with Ad Monetization, programmatic Ad Monetization.”
“Primarily, you know that the newsroom adopts more of traditional advertising, but then now, you’ve seen from statistics that 80% is going programmatic. So this is where I find a lot of joy: to see that a lot of news organisations are now adopting programmatic advertising, which will potentially increase their yield.”
Asked about how the initiative aligns with Google’s broader vision for Nigeria, Eze said, “If you think about Google’s mission, it’s always about making our content more accessible. So if you think about the news, right? And you think about Google’s mission, it always tallies because the news agencies are trying to ensure that they give out credible news, trustworthy news, and then making it accessible to everyone so that everybody understands what’s going on.”
She emphasised Google’s commitment to supporting both large and small content creators with free tools.
“It could be you’re a blog, it could be you’re a small news outfit, but then we want a situation where we can showcase a lot of tools—these tools are free—so you can upskill yourself and then also sustain the news industry, the media industry as well.”
On the tools that stood out to participants, Eze mentioned, “From the Ad Monetization side, we have the Google Ad Manager platform, which is free. We also have AdSense, it’s also a free tool. We have AdMob. Starting your Ad Monetization journey is quite easy now. It’s more about understanding what the tool can do and how it can monetize your platforms.”
She also highlighted tools from Publisher Day, such as News Consumer Insights 3.0, Google Analytics 4, Gemini, and NotebookLM, saying “All these tools can help those news agencies: both small and large to sustain themselves and grow.”
Looking ahead to future editions and ongoing support, Eze said, “Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This tallies with the general news industry goals to drive credible, trustworthy news, making it accessible to everyone. Google aims to support the media industry through its technologies and innovation to achieve its goals.”
