THE PIED PIPER REPORT Issue 17: October 2026 | Covering September 2026 | piedpiper.co.ke
THE SHORT VERSION
Kenyan marketing talks as though the whole country is online. The Communications Authority’s (CA) audience survey tells a different story: 57% of Kenyans aged 15 and over used the internet in the past week. Radio reached 74% and television 73%. Half the country tunes in to each of those every single day. Under a third open social media daily. Yeah.
What you need to do moving forward? Before you approve the next media plan, write down what share of your actual buyers each channel reaches.
THIS MONTH'S BIG STORY
The 57% country
Last month we wrote about AI answers and WhatsApp commerce. This is the other half of that picture.
The Communications Authority's Audience Measurement and Industry Trends Report (April 2026) asks Kenyans aged 15 and over what they watched, heard, and read in the past seven days. For January to March 2026, the numbers were:
Radio: 74%
Television: 73%
Internet: 57%
Newspapers: 15%
Moreover, it reveals that internet use is not climbing. Across the four quarters in the report, it sits virtually flat: 57% → 60% → 59% → 57%.
That said, 57% is an average. Internet use is 77% in urban areas versus 47% in rural ones. It is 66% among men and 48% among women. It is 77% in Nairobi compared to 43% in South Nyanza. In the top living-standards group, it reaches 92%, but in the lower-middle group (LSM 5 to 7), it falls to 26%.
Daily habit tells the same story: 51% watch television every day and 51% listen to radio every day. Meanwhile, only 31% use social media daily, and 57% say they use it rarely or never.
Advertisers haven't abandoned broadcast either. The CA's monitoring puts total spend on television, radio, and print at KES 12.72 billion for January to March 2026.
None of this is a case against digital. The Kenyans who are online are on their phones: 98.2% of internet users go online via smartphone. It is a case against planning as though Kilimani were Kenya.
Your buyers may not look like the national average. A Nairobi B2B firm can find nearly all of its buyers online. A seed brand cannot. The number that matters is yours, and you need to work it out.
The question for your team: What share of the people who could buy from us does our current plan reach in a month? Who is missing?
Pied Piper's position: Reach first. Choose channels by where your buyers are, not by where your marketing team spends its evenings.
TWO SIGNALS
Kenya: Digital ad spend fell sharply, then partly recovered: The CA report puts digital spend at KES 11.76 billion for July to September 2025. Its monthly figures add up to KES 6.08 billion for October to December and KES 7.46 billion for January to March 2026.
The Kenyan lesson: The room went quiet fast. Research shows that the brand that holds its spend while a category goes quiet gains market share. We know of no local test of that yet. Note: The report does not detail how digital spend is measured, so treat the size of the fall with care.
Digital & Tech: The Kenyan internet is a phone: The CA counted 52.3 million smartphones on Kenyan networks at the end of June 2026 (People Daily). Its audience survey finds 98.2% of internet users go online by smartphone, 5.8% by laptop, and 0.6% by desktop.
The Kenyan lesson: Test your website and checkout on a mid-range Android phone on mobile data before anyone signs it off on an office laptop.
ONE NUMBER
31%
That is the share of Kenyans aged 15 and over who use social media every day, according to the CA's audience survey for January to March 2026. Radio and television each sit at 51%.
What it actually means: On any given day, about seven in ten Kenyans do not open a social app.
What most people think it means: Everyone is scrolling all day, so a daily post equals daily presence.
What a Kenyan business does with it: A product bought daily needs a channel used daily. Price a radio schedule before drafting the next content calendar. (The same survey finds 60% of radio listeners tune to Swahili stations, 39% to vernacular, and 10% to English—some listen to more than one.)
PLAIN LANGUAGE
Reach
Definition: The share of your possible buyers who encounter your message at least once in a set period.
Done well in Nairobi: A brand picks the two or three channels that together cover most of its buyers, and stays on them all year. (Illustration, not a client case.)
Done wrong: Counting impressions. A million impressions served to the same 40,000 people is frequency, not reach.
A cheap test: Ask your next 20 customers where they first heard of you. Tally the answers directly against your budget split.
WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
The CA's next audience report, covering July to September 2026. Two readings matter:
Does digital spend climb back toward the KES 11.76 billion level seen a year earlier?
Does the CA clarify how it actually measures digital spend?
WORK WITH PIED PIPER
Do you know what share of your buyers your marketing reaches? The Autopsy works it out.
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