Mobile advertising is growing at an alarming rate in South Africa, but we are paying nearly 500% more than any other country in the world for our advertising space. Why? Simply, there is not enough South African inventory. The demand for advertising is greater than the space available.
The average CPC (cost per click) in other countries like the US and UK is about USD 0.08, while in South Africa it costs about USD 0.25 on average.
The problem exists because South Africa itself does not have any local inventory/publishers of WAP portals to speak of. We have MXIT, Vodafone Live, Soccer Laduma and a couple of insignificantly smaller ones. In a few articles previously I have urged local brands and businesses to create WAP portals at least at the rate that they create web sites. The reality is that last year the revenue generated by mobile advertising from SA was ZAR 1.9bn. But 90% of that revenue was spent on overseas mobile publishers like BBC, CNN and My Gamma and others. This means that the revenue generated by local advertising landed in the hands of foreigh media companies and mobile advertising servers like Admob(US), Admoda (U.K) and Buzz City (South East Asian).
I just get sick and tired of South Africa and Africa being re-colonised every time we happen to show growth in a particular sector. Being an emerging territory always gives big western businesses a head start on capitalising on our revenues. This should be a something for all of us to think about. Sometimes I also note that organisations like MMA in South Africa don't seem to have these issues at the top of the agenda and this is a matter for concern.
I will once again here urge local brands and organisations to create mobile wap portals with huge communities that are able to give advertisers platforms to target advertising more locally. We also have a duty to bring mobile social networking to Africa and South Africa in ways that give them the platform to express themselves, share, self actualise and access each other in a localised context.
