By Remy Raitt

The Dar es Salaam conference aims to uniform research infrastructure in African countries and find media measuring and target marketing methods that can be used across the continent. This will ensure that media and marketing results from different countries can be stacked up accurately and effectively.

PAMRO’s goal is to make this annual conference a convergence point where industry leaders from various African countries can share and learn from each other. “PAMRO is more and more used as a reference point to obtain information about the availability of media research results in different African countries, as well as for references where such information can be obtained from,” the organisation says.

Since Sunday, 23 until Wednesday 26 August a smorgasbord of delegates have been soaking in this year’s theme ‘Media Research for One Continent’. Updates on media audience research activities from across Africa and the rest of the world have been shared while presentations have addressed an array of topics. These include television audience research methodologies and the measurement and status of radio, print, internet and outdoor research.

Speakers from South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, America, England, Sweden and the Czech Republic will continue to tackle media monitoring-related challenges, solutions and findings from their country’s perspectives, although the greatest emphasis has been placed on Africa and how the continent is moving forward.

On Monday, 24 August, Neil Higgs, the chief innovation partner at TNS discussed a pro-bono analysis TNS did of a 20-country 32 400 respondent dataset from Afrobarometer to develop a short pan-African measure of socio-economic status. The analysis discovered that three levels of such a measure have been developed: a long version at both individual and household levels from which shorter versions have been derived, one of which has been adopted by PAMRO for their exclusive use and a very short version developed for the original ESOMAR request which is in the public domain. 

Oresti Patricios, the CEO of the Ornicogroup, South Africa presented a report that looks at the most talked about company brands, people brands and country brands in Africa, as determined by their social media foot print. Patricios discussed both the equity and popularity of the brands in Africa especially in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.

Radio experts GfK’s regional director Molemo Moahloli discussed radio as a driver for democracy in South Africa. He said radio must go through revolution based on much better understanding of its audiences. He explained that it needs to collect much more advertising revenue and it has to improve its programming. Moahloli believes it’s not just about ratings, but more about unpacking the nuances in the content to really understand what makes consumers tick, thus influencing the future of radio research in Africa. 

Candice Ulrich and Milton Tshabalala of Nielsen Watch Lead, Africa presented an in-depth report on what consumers across 15 different countries buy and watch. The information was showcased to better understand the integrated consumer purchase drivers, through combined demographic, lifestyle and behaviour profiling, which aimed to assist brands, marketers, advertisers and media to maximise reach, resonance and return on investment. 

And that’s only a handful of talks that went down on the first day of sessions in Tanzania. For a full list of speakers and topics visit pamro.org.

The PAMRO AGM was also held on Monday night followed by a gala dinner and the announcement of the new PAMRO president, The Collective CEO Joe Apprendi.

For more information, visit pamro.org. Alternatively connect with them on Twitter.