Africa’s digital landscape

In Africa, internet penetration is currently at about 30%, and growing rapidly. Some markets include a really high number of internet users like Nigeria or Kenya, who have an internet penetration rate of 70%. While Africa may have one of the lowest social media penetration rates globally (29%), the number of active users – particularly of Facebook – is rising fast, as are other platforms like Twitter and Instagram, with about 129 million active social media users on the continent at present.

Given that this is the case, why is media investment not in line with the activity that is going on online? If African consumers are spending a lot more time online versus on print or even TV, why is there still an under-investment in online channels?

It may be that we are not tracking the right measurements, that the metrics that we are tracking don’t translate into the bottom line. So, what is it that we need to measure in order to build a business case for increased investment?

Measuring the consumer journey

Consider the consumer journey that we look at as marketers, the stages of which can be defined as awareness, demand generation, acquisition and transaction, which leads to retention and loyalty. At each of these stages, we need to measure consumer behaviour to determine how effective the messaging was, for all media (TV, radio, digital and print).
This measurement can capture what the real business outcome was across each of these stages, by looking at metrics such as the incremental lift or attribution of that messaging, as well as reach.

Engagement is not a KPI

On Facebook, only a very small percentage of users online actually engage. According to Datalogix and Nielsen, there is no correlation to offline sales or brand health. However, this doesn’t mean that audiences don’t like your content - they will see your communication, but they may not take a certain action. So it can be misleading to focus on likes, comments, and shares. This means that focusing on this type of engagement as a key KPI may not be the right metric to measure impact.

Determining which metrics matter

Instead, we have to look at a couple of things to determine the metrics which matter, and which platforms to use. The first is time spent on that platform and the second is the penetration of that platform. For example, radio is a key media, having a very high penetration in most African markets. Print has a very low penetration, and time spent on it is fairly minimal.

While digital has a relatively low penetration, the time spent by the small number of people online is high. So it’s a combination of the two: looking at which channels have the highest penetration, and which channels consumers are spending their time on, and combining these. That is why we combine TV and digital, and radio and digital as our strategy for communicating with our audiences.

Finally, we also need to consider reach and ensuring that we’re driving sufficient reach to enable a proper impact.

Reach: Hyper-targeted vs wide-scale

What we’ve usually done with regard to online media is try to be very precise in targeting a specific audience, instead of going for mass scale to reach a larger audience. This is an advantage of digital: you can limit your messaging to a narrowly defined group, for example, 13-19-year-olds who are interested in football, and who live in Harare. However, ultimately this may decrease the number of people impacted overall – as suggested by Facebook’s white paper, Reach Matters: Driving Business Results at Scale 2016.

Key takeaways

We need to plan for where our audiences are spending more of their time. In Africa, this is really on a few social networks and online, where audiences spend time looking for local content, watching music videos or movies.

In Africa, it is critical that content and messaging is formatted and tailored for the mobile experience.

When we’re planning media, we need to be guided by key business objectives. So for Consumer Packaged Goods, this would be metrics that result in an increase in volumes and brand health. The good news is that many online platforms are now seeing the importance of accurate measurement and attribution tracking for brands to be able to measure the effectiveness of their advertising. This is the only way we can see a shift of more investment on digital media, where consumers may be spending more time with brands.

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