While the North American and European online ad market has been nearing the point of total saturation, there remains one final frontier. According to a recent article in the Zimbabwe Guardian, Why Africa Ad Networks will define Africa Online Marketing, Africa continues to be a major challenge for advertisers due to its media fragmentation.
In a continent with over 50 million internet users, the advertising network is remarkably untapped. It was only in 2008 that, SabiOne, the first pan-Africa ad network was launched. Another major ad network, Afrigator, was only just recently launched as well. While SabiOne has capitalized on major online news publications, Afrigator is pursuing a strategy of aggregating the African blogosphere.
With internet usage in Africa growing exponentially, 2010 will certainly be a year where major evolutionary changes occur in the way that media agencies target their consumers. Because Africa is a culturally diverse and fragmented, the ad network model will best deliver that evolutionary change for the pan-African online Market.
