Though this is an enormously powerful medium in South Africa, giving direct access to almost every individual, it seems that for many in the marketing world, this is still quite unchartered territory. Though much is being said about social media it pays not to forget the marketing opportunities mobile platforms present.
South Africa currently ranks number 28 on the list of countries with the most mobile phones globally, with 59 500 00 in use, this according to Wikipedia which quotes the 2011 GSM African Mobile Observatory report.
With approximately R500-million spent on mobile marketing in 2010, Vodacom, Mxit and Google all predicted that R1bn would be spent in South Africa by this year.
According to World Wide Worx's Mobility 2011 research project Mxit still demands the most attention from cellphone users 16+ years while Facebook is now starting to gain rapidly and Twitter has also made up some ground from a low base.
During Ornico's test phase some very interesting insights have become apparent:
- While demographic targeting is very specific on Mxit, it is not specific on PCMs (please call me's) and mobi sites
- Though South Africans are sport fanatics there seems to be very little advertising on sports mobi sites
- IOL has the highest number of advertisements against other news mobi sites
- Insurance companies particularly feature prominently on PCMs (please call me's)
Using an innovative combination of internal resources and external control groups to monitor Mxit, WAPs and PCMs, Ornico has grown its database of competitor mobile advertising material exponentially over the past year and can now provide clients with direct creative reference material across text-based, banner and flash advertisements.
Mobile will add an additional advertising dimension to the Brand Intelligence™ analysis offering to clients which consists of the unique mix of advertising, reputation and social media.
