Almost 55% of South Africa’s largest advertisers believe the sector will start recovering in 2021, three in 10 believe it will do so in 2022, while 9.7% believe that will only happen in two years, according to the latest Scopen Africa report.
César Vacchiano, Scopen co-founder and global CEO, said their analysis showed more than half of marketers had slashed their advertising spend. The switch from work-from-office to work-from-home saw digital media buying drop by 3.7% and digital media creative and content rise by 1.9%. Digital advertising, overall, showed most stability, and advertising for durable goods such as household goods and cars was on the increase, after the hard lockdown had shut down the vehicle sector, with only 105 passenger cars sold in April 2020 – a 99.6% reduction on April 2019 – while only 318 light commercial vehicles were sold during that period, a 96.8% drop.