DStv Media Sales walked away with the Media Owner of the Year Award, having previously achieved this accolade in 2011. The MediaShop Johannesburg won The Media Agency of the Year Award and has been rated the best-of-the-best in five previous years.

The MOST Legend and Rising Star Awards are presented to individuals in recognition of their commitment to the media industry. Nominations for these awards are submitted by respondents to the survey and the winner is selected by a panel of previous winners using specially selected criteria. These awards cannot be won more than once by any nominee.

Winners of the highly-prized awards for 2016 are:
  • Media Agency Legend - Josh Dovey; 
  • Media Owner Legend - Barry Sayer; 
  • Media Owner Rising Star - Wanele Mngomezulu; and 
  • Media Agency Rising Star - Ilsa Gräbe.
 
The MOST Lamb Awards, for companies that do not receive the minimum number of 30 votes, but who excel in terms of great service delivery and knowledge, went to Hitch Digital Media and Massiv Media.

The MOST Africa Awards were introduced in 2015 and are awarded to the top South African based media owner sales teams and media agency that respectively sell media space or strategically plan and book media in the rest of Africa. The Media Owner Africa Award went to JCDecaux and The Media Agency Africa Award was won by OMG Africa.

The Full Service Media Agency Award was scooped by The MediaShop Johannesburg and the Specialist Media Agency Award went to Aegis Media Central Services.

The media owner category winners were varied and some were first-time winners. In the radio category, Mediamark Radio took the honours while Cinemark won the cinema category and DStv Media Sales was top of the television category. Primedia Outdoor won the out-of-home (OOH) category and Mark1 was ranked number one in the digital category, both for the first time. Times Media garnered the honours in the newspaper category and Media24 Lifestyle came out on top in the magazines category.

In recent years, the incidence of companies acting as sales consultants on behalf of media brands that they do not own themselves nor represent exclusively has grown. This prompted the introduction of a new category into the 2016 MOST Awards, The Media Sales Consultancy Award. MMAP is the inaugural winner of the category that will most certainly grow in future years due to increased opportunities in the evolving media landscape.

A new award was introduced to the annual MOST Awards this year that acknowledges a deserving individual, who does not work for a media owner or media agency, but has contributed a great deal to the betterment of the media sector. The Bell Award went to Jos Kuper who has demonstrated that she is trustworthy, reliable, long serving, someone to turn to in times of conflict/indecision and whom you can rely on to supply facts and back them up.

Sandra Gordon, founder of the MOST Awards, explained why these awards are so important; “Simply put, we seek to enhance the relationship between media agency personnel and the sales and marketing teams within media owners. Ultimately better service, communication, and delivery levels rub off on clients who apportion a large chunk of their marketing budgets to advertising in our media. An independent and flourishing media is vital in our country. In addition, many successful agencies and owners have bought the research and applied our criteria to their team incentives. It is rewarding to see the level of participation and enthusiasm for the MOST Awards.”

The MOST Awards was conceived in 2009 and is a measure of the service efficacy of providers in the South African media industry. The MOST Awards is conducted annually as a market research survey administered independently by Freshly Ground Insights (FGI). Media agency employees are invited to rate the performance of the media owner sales teams with whom they have frequent contact and vice versa. The survey asks respondents to select the companies that they wish to vote for and requires that they be scored against a number of specific performance criteria.

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