South Africa: Mobile Social Networks are New Advertising Medium
A really interesting article over at allfrica.com about how in South Africa Mobile Social Networks are the New Advertising Medium.
They Say:
A MXIT subscriber frantically punches some text before sending a message to a friend, who replies obligingly. Another acquaintance, chipping in on the conversation, introduces a new friend to the two buddies.
This hypothetical exchange not only shows the entrenchment of mobile social networks such as MXit in SA - it is also part of an emerging advertising medium: mobile advertising. MXit has about 5,79-million subscribers, and the instant messenger is eagerly courting advertisers.
“We have the ability to position advertising in your consumers’ pockets. We can help you to establish your presence in future mobile technology now,” MXit says on its website.
Vodacom, which owns The Grid, a mobile social network that matches rival MTN’s noknok, estimates that mobile advertising will grow to about R1,5bn by 2011.
“Mobile social networks have the potential to attract advertising in the same way that internet-based social networks are already attracting significant amounts of advertising,” says Vodacom SA’s commercial executive director, Romeo Kumalo.
He says mobile social media is just one category of mobile advertising, and cautions that no independent measure of mobile advertising as an advertising medium is available yet.
Corporate advertisers have started testing the waters. For instance, MXit, in which Naspers owns a 30% stake, notes on its website that Peugeot used MXit as part of the launch of the Peugeot 107.
Eddie Groenewald, the CEO of mobile marketing firm Multimedia Solutions, agrees this is a trend : “Mobile advertising is certainly growing as more corporates are beginning to use MMS (multimedia messaging service) as a way to communicate directly with their customers,” he says.
High response rates to mobile advertising campaigns, ranging from 10%-25%, outstrip the meagre 1%-2% response rates of traditional advertising campaigns, he says.
” A strong base of users locally means there is base to send advertising to,” Groenewald says. But he also cautions that mobile social networks are useful in advertising “only for brand building and for certain types of sales”
Mobile penetration highlights the advantages mobile advertising offers. Last year, 18,81-million cellphones were either owned or rented in SA, compared with 17,52-million in 2006 and 15,27-million in 2005.
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