When I initially thought about what I’d write this month, I felt that the African media scene may be a subject of some interest. It didn’t take me very long to establish that, firstly, the available data is sketchy and potentially very inaccurate, and secondly, is perhaps best summed up as being rather “predictable”.
But there had to be a reason. And perhaps the simplest explanation is that it’s probably got a lot to do with sheer quantum. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Africa just doesn’t really count.
As a base for any figures quoted I used World Ad Trend 2004, published by the World Ad Research Centre in the UK. Its findings were based on 75 countries for which reliable spend data was available, and included only five African countries — South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Notwithstanding exactly how accurate the figures are, what’s clear is the following:
South African spend is almost twice that of Egypt.
In Tanzania spend is at best 2,5% that of South Africa, and in Uganda is less than 5%. In fact, Tanzania’s total spend was in the region of US$2.6-million, making it smaller than the marketing budget of many of our local companies.
In the USA they spent US$132-billion on advertising in 2003. This represents a truly startling 41% of the world total, which should be seen in comparison to the second biggest — Japan at US$31bn, or 9% of the US. A difference of just over US$100-billion! They’re followed by the UK, Germany and China, with between 4% and 6% of world adspend respectively.
At these levels it’s understandable that year-on-year growth in the USA is sitting at a paltry 3.3% — saturation has to surely kick in somewhere. The place ad agencies should have been looking at for expansion (and actually have in the past few years) is Eastern Europe. Here the economies are flourishing, and brands investing heavily — so we see year-on-year growth of 46% in Romania, 57% in Ukraine, and over 40% in the Czech Republic.
But of course there are many factors that can impact on media spend and blur the reality. Media availability, pricing, country population, GDP, and growth factors are all relevant. So perhaps the truest measure would be the dollar spend by advertisers, per capita — the amount spent per person. Then we get some really interesting stats.
At the top end of the spectrum, in Hong Kong, advertisers spend an incredible US$607 on every single person in ad terms. And nobody would guess Puerto Rico would be second (at US$442), with the USA only third (US$439), followed by Switzerland (US$341) and Norway (US$311). South Africa? 55th out of the 75 countries measured, at a paltry US$21 per person, per annum. This ranked us behind Peru, Latvia, Estonia and Honduras! And the bottom of the 75? With less than US$1 per person, its Tanzania, Yemen, and Syria.
So maybe now we get where the South African and African advertising industry’s fits in globally. Somehow it’s uplifting and depressing at the same time. Depressing because we are really very insignificant as a global player in terms of our size and our output. We’re dwarfed by the major players and, in effect, spend very little.
At the same time it’s uplifting to think that insignificant in size doesn’t necessarily translate into insignificant in terms of influence. A number of South Africans play major roles in advertising networks globally, and this country continues to win a whack of awards for advertising excellence on the global stage.
Harry Herber is group managing director of The MediaShop Group