Day 2 of Pamro jam-packed with insights

Day two of the 2022 Pamro Conference was packed with valuable insights for media owners, marketers, brand managers and advertising executives. The annual conference is an opportunity for the industry to share current research methodologies, as well as challenges, successes and failures.

One of the highlights of the second day of the conference was a presentation focusing on the results of the latest Global Business Index (GBI). C-suite executives – the top 1% of business leaders in Africa – were surveyed on their biggest concerns which were then benchmarked against those of the global norm.

Jim Ford, head of overall development commercial service Global Audience Measurement and Media Cell Technology at Ipsos, said that African business executives were generally optimistic about the economic state of areas in their control, but less so about their own country and the world. African youth, he said, were “overwhelmingly keen” to tackle the problems of their countries head-on.

In 2022, with the business implications of Covid declining, the price of fuel and rising inflation were the main concerns of this group, in line with the rest of the world. Climate change was seen as less of an impact on business than other issues such as public health crises, currency fluctuations, volatile markets, taxation and terrorism threats.

Environmental, social, governance (ESG) is growing in importance both for company policymaking and for the clients of those companies, but businesses still emphasise quality and cost above sustainability.

Africa’s top business leaders use diverse media portfolios, underpinned by accuracy and balance, through a range of platforms including print, TV, digital and podcasts, the latter which have become an important tool in their media repertoire.

Another highlight of the second day was a presentation on Nielsen’s latest Digital Consumer Survey. The survey looked at how media habits have changed in SA since 2019.

Quoting statistics from this survey, Noah Makholwa, digital manager at Nielsen, said that out of SA’s total population of 60.6 million, 29.6 million were internet users, divided equally by gender. Gen Z and millennials, in equal parts, were the main users; Gauteng had the highest number of cybercitizens, using mainly English, followed by Zulu and Afrikaans. More than six million users are unemployed and only 10 million have full-time jobs. Users spend more than 44 hours per week on digital media, primarily on their smartphones: messaging, social networking and streaming, which is becoming increasingly popular.

Fusion data indicates that the increase in streaming is being driven by faster internet speed and cheaper data rates. The mean internet download speed in SA was 28.62 megabits (Mbps) in 2022, up from 19.94 Mbps in 2021. Makholwa pointed out that data has become cheaper since Cell C joined forces with Capitec and brought data down from R99 per GB in 2021 to R45 per GB in 2022.

While the use of smartphones and TV screens is up, the use of computers and laptops is down. YouTube is down, but Netflix and Showmax are up while the new channel, Viu (the telenovela channel) is doing well.

The theme of this year’s Pamro Conference was ‘Elevating media measurement and evaluation in a resilient Africa’.

Other speakers on day two of the conference included Nielsen’s Prithvi Raj who discussed Nielsen Confluence, a combination of cutting-edge passive measurement solutions and a privacy-compliant opt-in high quality measurement panel; and Pamela Gwanzura, CEO of the Zimbabwe Advertising Research Foundation on how Zimbabwe has opened its air waves to the media industry.

Nyathela Mhlongo presented the Pamro 2022 Country reports.

In addition, day two featured a presentation on dentsu’s Consumer Connection System research; a joint BRC and Ipsos presentation on SA’s first cross-media passive measurement panel in Africa; a panel discussion on the future of audience insights in an increasingly digital world; an algorithm called Media Stretch.

The 2022 Pamro Conference was made possible by Telmar, Nielsen, DStv Media Sales, Ornico, Plus94 Research and Survey54. To watch day one of the 2022 Pamro Conference go to www.PAMRO.org.

The big take-out: Africa’s top business leaders use diverse media portfolios including print, TV, digital and podcasts.