Mobile advertisers are sticking to native websites as they seek the largest impact, with smartphone penetration still low in Africa.
Speaking at the East Africa Com conference in Nairobi, Kenya, Moses Kemibaro, founder and strategic advisor at digital agency Dotsavvy, said InMobi statistics showed feature phones still control 84.8 per cent of the market, compared to 14.3 per cent for smartphones and 0.9 per cent for tablets.
The statistics further show 97 per cent of all impressions are on mobile websites compared to only three per cent on mobile apps.
Kemibaro thus said any mobile advertising campaign in Africa that does not target feature phones is bound to fail.
“The statistics speak for themselves and these figures are replicated almost everywhere you look in Africa apart from some countries in the southern and northern region,” he said.
“Mobile apps are coming into focus in Africa but still under 15 per cent of ads are being served on mobile ad networks.”
Kemibaro urged advertisers to keep their campaigns simple as most devices in the market were unlikely to access modern websites.
“Keep your mobile campaign simple. Consumers have a very limited attention span of about 10 seconds so make the mobile landing page mobile ad easy to load. Less is more on mobile,” he said.
Whereas in other parts of the world Nokia seems to be fading, he said in Africa the firm continues to control the web market, contributing 54 per cent of all impressions from mobile phones.
He also spoke on the importance of ensuring maximum reach across all devices and utilisation of mobile targeting options such as geo-targeting where possible.
