In the face of socio-cultural unrest, an unknown economic future and a global pandemic, the industry finds itself in a near-impossible situation.

“Being agile” and “expecting the unexpected” have taken on new meaning in 2021. There are opportunities that lie in collaborating, learning and forging a view of fast-paced changes in an increasingly fragmented media and economic landscape both locally and globally. The Future of Media online conference series is in partnership with VodaMedia.

Hosted by Siya Sangweni, our panel took a look at how the world is embracing a new way of digital and how businesses are adjusting to a huge shift in the market to stand out among the online crowd.

So, who is VodaMedia and what are they doing to shift away from the unpredictable to shape a predictable future for publishers, advertisers and brands?

Paula Hulley, CEO at IAB SA was asked if she would share insights on the June report around the current consumer digital landscape. She reminded the audience that in the digital world we have needed to build the plane while we fly it, without even knowing the destination we are heading to. She then continued and left us with a few golden nuggets of information, stating key stats from the IAB SA research report. “Stats from 2020 Ad spend showed a huge shift to online and that the current consumer landscape is digital. Reports show us that the advertising spend from the buy side went up 18% and even though the industry shrunk a little, the portion of the digital pie grew 21%. If we look specifically at some of the ad spend channels,  paid social stayed constant accounting for 20% of the revenue and searched content on Google staying at 90% of digital spend.”

Benjamin Fahmueller, Head of Global Partnerships SSA at Google added, “The most recent search trends show a lot more supplier/ product searches, meaning consumers are making more informed decisions and doing more research when it comes to buying a product from a pricing and quality perspective. This is a great opportunity for brands to get into this space to be the search of choice. Searches for local getaways and domestic travel have increased more than 200% and not related to product, online privacy searches have also increased as well.”

Sangweni asked Zunaid Parker, Executive Head of VodaMedia about the evolution of telco in the media and advertising industry. Parker gave us insights into the developments and some advice to follow, “The advertising industry as well as all businesses have been in a state of flux and have needed to reevaluate best practices, so where do you allocate revenue to get return? Vodacom has gone through 3 eras. Vodacom has gone from being just a “Telco” to a “Telco+Reason to consume” and lastly evolving from a Telco to TechComm. The evolution of advertising is the realization that you cannot just go with only one construct and that a multi-platform strategy is imperative. We always want to co-exist and collaborate with industry.”

Hulley said she found the user engagement stats with news platforms interesting by saying that she is really impressed with brands that have created access for people to go online, whether it was for SME to grow their businesses or for students to learn online.”

A commendable brand doing this is VodaMedia. Parker explained the rationale behind THE FUSE and SACCESS, two new platforms that are helping shape a more predictable future for publishers, advertisers and brands. “These platforms were developed with influential capabilities of sports and the youth in mind. This is to give lift to great content to become more relevant to main stream publishing. We needed to develop a platform that allows co-access for the non-consumers of news in order for it to resonate with a particular segment. This will in turn enable publishers and content creators with consumer views.”

Fahmueller added that, “THE FUSE and SACCESS speaks for the user, the content creators, the advertisers and the publishers. It allows for introductions to users and advertisers, broadens an audience for publishers and opens up revenue avenues for content creators. This offering brings a lot to the market and plays a big role in the media eco system.”

In summary, all the panelists agreed that with an increase in digital consumption comes great opportunities for brands to reach targeted audiences, that brands need to be versatile and open to collaboration and that with collaboration, it allows world of opportunity to push content, build on engagement and assist with monetization, which is an all-round win for publishers, users, and brands.

To watch the full discussion, click here.

The Big Take-Out: The evolution of advertising is the realisation that you cannot just go with only one construct, a multi-platform strategy is imperative.