From Rome to ROMI

By Rob Smuts

Like Pliny the Elder (ex Africa semper aliquid novi) most marketers keep looking to find something new from Africa, but it’s not always easy to find the key to measurable ROMI, even in a temptingly under-marketed and under-supplied African market.

At the core of this, seemingly lies the lack of access to robust media and marketing data, and marketing insights. In the recently published World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) Marketing in Africa 2015 report 50% of marketers indicated that accurate ROMI analysis is “impossible”. Interestingly though, if we probe the data further, we discover that 55% of these same marketers indicate that “media audience measurement is sufficiently robust and reliable” in these regions.

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A tale of two magazines

By Rob Smuts

The recent closure of heat magazine made me think about the state of the magazine industry in general. It’s easy to be swayed by all the negativity around print media overall and magazines in particular. Consumer magazines’ circulation numbers continue to slide, mobile is taking over, etc. Don’t even mention programmatic!

But my gut feel tells me a different story, so I started digging a bit deeper.

Sure, consumer magazines are under significant circulation and advertising pressure. The official ABC circulation figures for the period October to December 2014 contain some real shockers.

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