Selected households in Lagos State will soon start receiving 36GB of data monthly as incentives for participating in the new television audience measurement programme.

This comes as the Bola Tinubu administration began the first phase of its national audience measurement system, operated by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) under the FreeTV brand, following the June 2026 unveiling of the Digital Switch Over project.

The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, represented by the Director-General of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), Olalekan Fadolapo, disclosed this at a press briefing in Lagos on Tuesday.

Mr Idris said, “A reliable audience measurement system can strengthen investor confidence, support the production of quality Nigerian content and create opportunities across our media and creative industries.

“Our broadcasting sector is not only a source of information and entertainment; it is also an important economic ecosystem supporting journalists, producers, filmmakers, actors, advertisers, technology providers and many other professionals.

“At its core, AMS helps us better understand our audiences: who is watching, what they are watching, and when they are watching. This information is vital to broadcasters, advertisers, content producers, investors and regulators.”

The AMS will replace Nigeria’s traditional diary-based television audience measurement system with Peoplemeter technology that automatically captures viewing patterns in participating households.

The selected households will, under the programme, have Peoplemeter devices and data-enabled routers installed to securely track television viewing and transmit the information daily to a central data centre.

Adding more detail on the initiative, Patrick Gomes, chief operating officer of First Media and Entertainment Integrated Limited (FMEIL), GARB, the technical partner implementing the system, said participating households will initially receive 36GB of data monthly as an incentive.

Mr Gomes, while explaining that the monthly incentive is currently valued at about N11,000 and is intended to cover participating households’ browsing needs, noted that the programme will also introduce a quarterly incentive based on how consistently participating households comply with the audience measurement system’s requirements.

According to him, households with higher levels of compliance would receive higher quarterly incentives, while those with lower compliance would receive a corresponding proportion of the incentive.

The rollout in Lagos followed the technical testing phase and a proof-of-concept pilot conducted in selected homes, after the pilot results were presented to stakeholders in Abuja in the second quarter of 2024.

The households recruited for the panel were selected from Nigeria’s first nationwide Establishment Survey, completed in the first half of 2023. The survey covered 60,000 households across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), including 7,000 households in Lagos.

The Director General of the NBC, Charles Ebuebu, said, “The rollout of this audience measurement system marks a transformative milestone for Nigeria’s broadcasting ecosystem.”

Mr Ebuebu noted that the system will provide accurate, passive tracking of audience consumption patterns while addressing transparency challenges in the advertising and broadcasting markets.

The second phase will extend the system to Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano states, while the third phase will cover other major media markets across the six geopolitical zones.