The speed of which a mobile marketing campaign can be created and rolled out has made it the preferred method to reach the target audience in South Africa. Unlike print, radio or even television, which all day time to roll out a campaign, mobile ads are being done in days and loaded onto a mobile marketing platform for distribution. While this is true of any part of the world, it is notable that this is being the most popular way to reach the audience in South Africa.
Traditional mediums can take weeks or even months, but MMS-based ads are reaching more than 90 percent of the base with 48 hours of the campaign being rolled out. And once again this has to do with the fact that for decades many people didn’t have traditional landlines, and with the price of mobile handsets coming down it is a device nearly everyone is acquiring. In South Africa there are 36 million active SIM cards, which is more than TV viewers, radio listeners or Internet users. Thus companies are looking to reach out to mobile users with marketing campaigns as it is the largest group of users in the country.
What we find interesting to note is that for decades people without landline phones, TVs or radios were still considered viable consumers but most marketers couldn’t reach them. Now thanks to mobile handsets more and more people are suddenly becoming an audience for advertising!