By Jason Probert, GM, Digital Services MTN South Africa

South Africa’s digital marketing industry faces a stiff challenge. Many of the signals that advertisers have until now used to reach audiences online in the open web with personalised and timely content are drying up. Unless a replacement is found, publishers will increasingly be unable to compete with the walled gardens due to a loss of precision in targeting and measuring ad effectiveness.  

This changing environment means publishers are staring down the barrel of decreased ad revenue through a reduction in brand spend and challenges to premium inventory charges. 

Fortunately, innovations at the nexus of adtech and telecommunications promise to solve these challenges and create a more sustainable advertising model that’s better for brands, publishers, and consumers. The key is to act now and pivot towards advertising solutions that are tailor made for advertising’s future state. 

The root causes of signal loss

Ultimately, the changes taking place in South Africa’s digital advertising ecosystem come down to one word: privacy. The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI) in South Africa sets out stringent consent requirements and limits on the use of data by organisations, driving a shift towards privacy-centric digital advertising. 

Advertisers must now ensure transparency, seeking explicit consent from individuals before collecting and processing their personal information. This regulatory environment compels companies to innovate in privacy-preserving technologies and methodologies, ensuring compliance while still engaging effectively with consumers. The days of adtech deemed invasive under the terms of POPI are therefore limited.

Another key driver is consumer demand. According to one recent study, 88% of South Africans expressed concern about privacy online. Seventy-five percent were also confident that policies to protect internet user privacy would improve trust in the internet. Brands and publishers take note: consumers are passionate about their privacy rights. 

Signals in decline

In the years since POPI, and other similar privacy rules worldwide, became law, advertising signals have become progressively weaker. 

Third-party tracking cookies are the most famous example of this signal loss. Already, major browsers including Safari and Firefox restrict cookies. Soon they will be joined by Edge and Chrome, which will make cookies an opt-in service for users. In effect, those browser companies are killing off cookies by giving consumers control over whether they are tracked online or not. Given just how much value South African consumers put on their privacy, we can expect to see cookie signals and match rates fall off a cliff edge.

Something similar has already happened to Apple’s ID for Advertisers (IDFA). Once a treasure trove of data on iPhone users’ web and app habits, the IDFA is a shadow of its former self. Apple’s AppTracking Transparency (ATT) framework in iOS 14.5 made the IDFA opt-in, and in the process slashed ID match rates from 80% to just 27%. It is likely that Google’s Advertising IDs for Android will go a similar way.

Enabling privacy-centric advertising

Encouragingly, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for advertisers and publishers. For one, although consumers demand greater privacy, they are also still keen to receive personalised content and engaging, relevant digital experiences. Indeed, two-thirds of South African consumers say that they are happy to swap personal information for a more tailored experience so long as companies are transparent about how they’re using it.

Second, a new wave of innovation has created a roadmap for how brands and publishers can shift to privacy preserving practices that also enable the levels of personalisation and relevance that consumers demand.

As one of South Africa’s largest publishers, MTN is taking the lead in driving the publisher shift in the country. Properties such as Ayoba and MTN Play offer partners the ability to engage with 12 million users (using two new services from a new partnership with adtech innovator Novatiq. Together we are leveraging our network intelligence to enable privacy-first programmatic advertising at scale:

1. MTN Ads Verified ID draws on our subscriber network intelligence to verify publisher specific website and app users across devices in a way that is secure and compliant with POPI privacy regulations;
2. MTN Ads Addressable Audiences uses a publisher generated transient user ID to link to verified first-party audiences based on consented MTN subscriber attributes for real-time, real human  privacy-first personalised advertising.

These services offer brands and publishers a way to verify audiences on the “open web,” allowing them to reach the vast majority of internet users that are not logged-in to a website or platform or in any other way authenticated. It therefore delivers the scale and performance required by advertisers whilst sacrificing nothing in terms of privacy and subscriber data protection. It also offers much improved customer online experience.

Working with Novatiq, MTN is helping ensure that publishers and brands in South Africa can continue to leverage premium inventory to reach the right people, at the right time, and with the right message, thereby supporting ad-funded content and protecting publishers’ monetisation strategies. 

As brands and publishers adapt to the challenges of signal loss, and pivot to meet customer demand and regulatory pressures around data privacy, our solutions will deliver a key differentiator to brands and publishers while making the internet a better place for consumers.