Online advertising is making in-roads into the overall SA advertising market, says Diane Charton, GM at Acceleration Media.
"Research from World Wide Worx shows that rich media banners accounted for only 7% of SA online revenue s in 2003 and grew to 15% by 2005," explains Charton.
Charton says broadband penetration in SA over the past two years has made rich media a viable marketing tool. "Local marketers have come to understand that rich media is effective in winning attention from users and drawing responses from the audience."
Charton adds that rich media advertisements have a response rate that is two to three times better than standard advertisements.
Marketing analyst Chris Moerdyk says: "I believe online advertising has an enormous future in SA and there will come a time in the not too distant future when online advertising will challenge print and TV for a dominant position. This is not speculation, just a matter of time."
Moerdyk says that Telkom`s high connectivity costs and relatively slow broadband hamper the growth of online advertising.
"On average, South Africans are working on broadband speeds about 100 times slower than those in Japan. Accessing the Internet is still expensive relative to other countries, such as France where access is free," explains Moerdyk.
"As the Internet becomes more accessible to the mass market and as these access speeds increase, so will advertising increase to the point of online advertising taking a dominant role."
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