media update’s Adam Wakefield was at Google South Africa’s headquarters in Johannesburg on Tuesday, 6 February, where Google South Africa country manager Luke Mckend spoke about the necessity of audiences, mobile, and video.

Place mobile front and centre

As Google Kenya country manager Charles Murito notes, the growth in African Internet use has been driven by mobile to such a degree that Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are in the top five countries globally where Google searches are done through mobile.

This underlines Mckend’s point that “the majority of our customers really need to be thinking about, ‘How do I build a business with online advertising in a mobile first environment?’”.

Since Mckend joined Google, the biggest shift he has noticed is the pivot from a desktop-only world to one where “everything works seamlessly on your mobile device”.

“That’s probably the most critical thing. And in South Africa, if you’re a customer of ours, maybe 60% of your traffic will be coming from mobile, maybe even slightly more. If you’re in Nigeria, it is probably 80%, maybe more. In Kenya, somewhere probably in between but you can see how important mobile has become,” Mckend said.

“As a customer, you don’t have assets, [such as] a website if your communications aren’t really optimised for that mobile experience. You’re probably dead in the water to be honest.”

Video is key to online advertising today

The second big shift Google has noted, specifically from an advertising perspective, is the primacy of video today. Video, Mckend said, has “really changed the game”.

“Three, four years ago video didn’t have quite the reach that would have that much impact, but now you can use video, in particuar in South Africa, to have as much impact as television, depending on how you use it and which TV station you are competing against,” he said.

Video cuts across all interest groups and ages. Its broad appeal across age groups in particular is important to recognise. Video’s rise to prominence has not been driven just by a “youth phenomenon”.

Your audience is valuable to brands

The nature of online advertising is constantly changing, as is the technology driving it. Publishers have had to change at the same time, and for online advertising, Mckend suggests starting with your audience first, instead of ad formats.

“The way I would think about how publishers need to be successful these days [for online advertising] is to move away from thinking about ad slots, and towards thinking about audiences,” he said.

“Who is my audience? Where is that audience? How do I make sure that I can manage my audience in such a way that I can get messages in front of them in the most valuable places? If you can get that right, then you’ll probably maximise the amount of revenue you can make.”

Understanding the composition of your audience is key because that is what you are selling to advertisers. That should be your primary focus, because that is where your value lies.

For more information, visit www.google.com.

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Understanding what your consumer wants is what will separate good companies from the best online. Read more in our article, Why online marketing is knowing consumer needs before your competition.