The growth of mobile advertising in South Africa has the potential to be massive, according to Herman Singh, managing executive of mobile commerce at Vodacom.
Singh said advertising in South Africa is a ZAR60 billion (US$5.6 billion) industry, with digital making up only 3 per cent of that, of which only 10 per cent is spent on mobile.
“Mobile is only about 0.3 per cent of total spend on advertising in South Africa,” he told HumanIPO.
He said there is a great disparity between global norms and mobile advertising in South Africa.
“In South African digital advertising is going to be mobile because most people are active on the internet through their cellphones.”
Singh said Vodacom believes the amount spent on mobile advertising in South Africa should be far greater.
“We think that mobile advertising should be a business of 10 to 20 per cent [of advertising revenue spent in South Africa].”
He said marketers are looking for communities that targeted advertising messages can be sent to.
Highlighting Vodacom’s m-commerce and vouchering platform Vouchercloud, he said South Africa has seen some of the highest adoption rates in the world.
HumanIPO reported in February, Vodacom South Africa had launched Vouchercloud, a smartphone app that uses location information to find local deals.
The company partnered with numerous brands in order to provide deals across a range of categories, including Edgars, Jet, Makro, Game, Planet Fitness, Doppio Zero, Nu-metro Cinemas, McDonalds, Adega, Billabong and Pizza E Vino.
“Worldwide, Vouchercloud has been launched in five counties and South Africa is the first developing nation. It is seen as one of the fasted adopting countries,” Singh said.
He said the average global user redeems a maximum of two vouchers a month, while in South Africa that number is as high as five.
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