Collins says, the larger more populated countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, which had lockdowns, were hit harder than many others that only imposed curfews.

The duo says while there is increasing investment in both West and East Africa, the following countries have tightened control on mediums:
  • Nigeria
  • Ghana
  • Kenya
  • Tanzania
  • Mozambique, and
  • Zambia.
National governments have been tightening controls on the medium in terms of location and appearance of billboards, which in some cases have led to as much as 300% rises in council tax.

Multiple market campaigns are increasing, reaching 70% of the total in some regions, and Collins expects that to reach 90% in the next few years.

As with other areas of the world, audience measurement, or the lack of it, is a major problem, with advertisers cutting their research budgets during the pandemic.

Collins adds, "Our audience research capability was much stronger five to 10 years ago and I estimate that last year only three out of 21 countries had credible audience research."

"Here in South Africa, we're starting to beat that drum. We're going to get about half a dozen advertisers to invest in research across their key markets and show the rest of the market how it can be done. It doesn't have to cost a fortune and it will encourage global companies to invest more in their OOH marketing budgets," says Collins. 

"Greater measurement will help OOH provide a digital capability for clients," says Collins. According to the duo, there have been massive increases in digital boards, especially in the south, east and west and more money going into programmatic.

"Africa is an outdoor continent and we're all an OOH group of people, so if we are able to quantify our audiences like Google and Facebook do, we'll see a lot more spend coming back to OOH and the medium becoming more relevant to advertisers in the future," adds Collins. 

Collins called on the specialist OOH agencies to invest more in becoming "data fundees and data miners."

"They need to provide OOH data and compare it with other media and so enable our clients to make better site selection and reach the most relevant audiences,” adds Collins. 

According to the duo, media owner fragmentation has risen, with new players, many of them local, entering the medium and unfortunately sometimes putting up lower quality sites.

"We will see more consolidation, it's happening already in Zambia and Mozambique. But until governments take more control of where sites are located and how they look, we will still get fragmentation. There's a long way to go," Collins concludes.

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