Ad group decries lack of data in African nations

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February 5, 2018 3:57 PM

The agency’s Group General Manager, Mrs Nicky Van Der Meulen, made the observation at the Google Online Advertising Conference for Media Personnel in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The online advertising group, Hitch Digital, on Monday lamented the lack of local data in African nations, blaming the problem on inadequate storage facilities in the continent.

She spoke on: “Understanding the Online Advertising Ecosystem’’.

According to her, data supply was lacking in Africa because advertisers did not know how to use their own data and did also not know ways to monetise their data.

The advertising chief argued that fear of competitors getting hold of the data also affected availability of data.

She listed some options that could aide advertisers to reach customers in the right way as category, location and keyword, time of day, Ad format language and frequency network speed apps.

Van Der Muelen appealed to African advertisers to do more research, saying that research was key to an advertiser’s work.

She also advised online advertisers to create content that could be relevant and convenient for customers.

“For content to be relevant, the advertiser should understand how the content will work; know what appeals to the market and the relevance of local data.

“Relevance and convenience are simple but must be complied with to make the needed impact on the consumers.

“If an advertiser or advert is relevant to someone, he will buy into it and stay there for life but when it is the opposite, it is thrown out.’’

She said that the exponential increase in technology from the old ways of advertising to the present one has had good impact on the African digital advertising space.

According to her, the growth of the advertising technology landscape over the years shows that technology has moved from 150 to 5000 different technologies from 2011 to 2017.

She said that the challenges that existed within these periods were interweaving all the channels to make operations easy for both advertisers and publishers.

“Technologies have moved in advertising from newspaper ad, billboards, radio, television, direct buying and now to programmatic buying, which is the main platform.

“I encourage advertisers to leverage on the programmatic buying technology to be able to give their customers the best content,’’ she said.

The advertising chief said that programmatic buying was a platform where both advertisers and publishers came together to utilise the technology that existed there for better productivity.

She listed some of the technologies that existed on the programmatic buying as trading desk, demand side platform and data supplying.

“Programmatic buying integrates well with other technologies since it helps in the direct deal with the publishers,’’ she said.

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