As online access becomes more readily available in South Africa, though nowhere near where we hope to one day be, it makes sense that advertisers are targeting this space and ramping up their ad spend.

Online advertising revenues in South Africa rose from R452m to R566m this year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) South Africa Internet Advertising Revenue Report conducted by PwC. What’s more, search internet advertising revenues hit R865m, up from R680m from 2013 to 2014.

You might be surprised to find out that mobile revenue declined to R64m from R172m, although there may be extenuating circumstances here. Fin24 reports:

…the IAB argued that this decline was misleading due to “exclusion of search revenues” ad spend moving offshore and low levels of market participants.

What’s becoming clearer is just how dominant mobile internet usage has become, smartphones now providing a rich experience for mobile users:

“Fuelled by factors such as greater availability of mobile data services and increasingly affordable smartphones, mobile internet subscribers are estimated to increase from 36.6% to 69.1% of the country’s population in the next five years. Already, 61% of South Africa’s web traffic is generated by mobile devices,” said [Gustav Goosen, head of the IAB’s Research Council.

He added that advertisers would inevitably follow increasingly mobile savvy consumers.

“While it goes without saying that advertisers will increasingly target consumers on their mobile devices, the challenge will be to communicate a unified message over a multitude of devices and platforms. This will lead to challenges in the measurement of the value of mobile advertising, when the lines between devices and platforms become blurred.”

Goosen also added that in terms of advertisers’ social media spend, 60% went to Facebook and around 18% on Twitter.

No wonder Zuckerberg is giving away 99% of his wealth – or is he?

[source:fin24]