Africans are using mobile phones in unprecedented numbers, but mobile advertising in Africa hasn’t caught up with other forms of media advertising – at least not yet, according to a report in HowWeMadeItInAfrica.
André de Wet is managing director of PriceCheck, an online shopping and price comparison directory. He spoke at an Africa Com conference in Cape Town in November.
Mobile phones are an attractive platform for advertisers in Africa but “mobile advertising is actually not happening as we expected it to be,” deWet said.
One of the reasons is that advertisers aren’t adapting specific solutions to new mobile technology, de Wet said. They’re still using old technologies such as webpage banner ads to advertise on websites browsed on mobiles.
“(Mobile phones are) not the web,” de Wet said. He is urging advertisers to get away from web thinking. “Get away from web advertising. Get away from web banners and the web (way of) doing things. Make it easy, make it for a small screen, and make it personalized,” he advises advertisers.
PriceCheck recently introduced a mobile product search app which also features a barcode scanner for in-store searches and price comparisons. De Wet, who is expanding PriceCheck across Southern Africa, said when they decided to introduce the app, the company did some some research and learned the following based on its findings:
– Fifty percent of women share on social media what they’ve bought, and how much they paid.
– People are twice as likely to buy online using mobile phones than other platforms such as personal computers.
– People are twice as likely to subscribe.
– Users are three times more likely to engage and interact on mobile phones than on the web.
– Apps are the banner ads of the future.
When it comes to apps, “There is no URL to remember, there is no website name to remember. All I need is a little square picture (on my phone) that will give me the solution,” de Wet said.
Online companies such as TripAdvisor have introduced mobile apps that are more personalized and easier to access for consumers than website services, according to de Wet.
“The in-product flow advertising is a very interesting one – it’s personalized and it works,” he said, adding that he thinks it works better than web advertising and will benefit small niche products and advertisers as well. “Facebook has picked it up and is running away with it (as a) result, and we have seen the result of that as well. It’s very powerful.”
Location-based mobile ads also have a strong potential for companies and brands, de Wet said, according to HowWeMadeItInAfrica. PriceCheck has benefited from this. “Target mobile advertising has a higher CPA (cost per action) because the interaction with people on those mobile ads is completely different than it is on the web,” he said.
“Mobile ads are just getting started but if you look at apps, that will change everything,” de Wet predicts.
