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UK based International Media Planning and Buying Specialists

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With over thirty years' involvement in strategy planning and media buying for international ad. campaigns, Fox Media has all the skills, knowledge, contacts and experience to ensure that your African campaign is planned and implemented successfully, whatever your spend level. You'll find our full contact details here.

Wherever you are in the world, we look forward to hearing from you!

Africa & the
Middle East

These regions encompass countries which are light years apart in terms of media availability and advertising regulation. Fox Media has extensive experience of planning and buying media space and airtime in Africa.

Certain major African markets such as South Africa (population around 44 million) offer advertising facilities which in broad terms match those of most advanced 'first world' countries. But others, including some other quite large states, still lag behind, often hindered simply by a lack of demand for media advertising. Literacy rates in Africa are a major factor, too: there are still twenty-two countries where more than half the population is illiterate - fifteen of them are in Africa.

And language - South Africa has eleven official languages - is also a key media consideration in planning and buying African media advertising campaigns. Where economic growth is minimal, this depresses the advertising revenues which might otherwise galvanise the development of new media. One practical effect of this is that in many African countries most newspaper revenue is derived from cover sales, rather than advertising - very different from the situation in (for instance) Europe.

In terms of media research, there is very little available on a pan-African basis, though Telmar is making progress on harmonising multi-country data, comparing the ways in which media research questions are framed and exploring the possibility of stablishing a "core" questionnaire which could be used in research across the continent. The most widely-available reliable source of data for the media buyer nowadays is TGI, which currently offers media and product surveys covering Iran, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and United Arab Emirates.

There is ample reliable media research in South Africa, where those planning African media campaigns can also make use of surveys such as AMPS®, the All Media and Products Survey, RAMS®, the Radio Audience Measurement Survey and TAMS®, the Television Audience Measurement Survey.

Governmental authorities in Africa have a variety of attitudes to the regulation of product advertising: tobacco-producing countries such as Malawi, Kenya and Zimbabwe face a real dilemma over controls on tobacco advertising, whilst most other countries in the region are well advanced with either controls or outright bans. A number of

countries in both Africa and the Middle East have stringent controls on the advertising of products which are 'frowned on' for religious or cultural reasons.

In a number of countries where Western media have established a presence, it is the case that locally-produced media are trusted more than those whose programming or editorial is sourced from abroad. These too are factors which need to be borne in mind when planning media campaigns covering Africa.

But whilst each African country has its own set of media characteristics and quirks, it's rare to be unable to find a combination of media choices which will provide effective coverage and impact for a particular advertising campaign. And as the popularity of the TV show Big Brother Africa has shown, some of the backstreets of the global media village are just as "in touch" as the rest.

For more details about our international media planning and buying services call Richard Fox direct from the UK on 01354 740916 or on +44 1 354 740916 from outside the UK.