CASE STUDY

24.com - Mobile Advertising Study

South Africa saw smartphone ownership and mobile usage grow rapidly, yet advertising budgets stayed weighted toward desktop, despite mobile already accounting for the majority of page views on 24.com's sites. Published in 2019, this was one of the first studies to use Brand Metrics data, with 24.com partnering with us to measure the brand lift effect of mobile display advertising, and how format, messaging, targeting and brand size shape the results.

Background & objective

Media24, one of South Africa's largest publishers, set out to challenge a long-standing industry assumption: that capping ad frequency at three exposures is the safest way to protect campaign performance. Working with Brand Metrics, Media24 wanted to test whether higher frequency levels could actually drive stronger results.

Methodology

The analysis covered close to 500 campaigns across 19 industry categories, comparing brand lift outcomes, awareness, consideration, preference and action intent, across different frequency levels. That scale gave Media24 a genuine evidence base for how frequency affects campaign performance, rather than relying on convention or guesswork.

Datapoints & download hook

The results challenged the three-frequency-cap rule directly: campaigns with higher frequency consistently outperformed lower-frequency equivalents, with total brand lift up to 33.6% higher in banking and finance, and 26.5% higher in insurance. Download the full report for the category-by-category breakdown and what it means for planning your own campaigns.

Background & objective

South Africa saw smartphone ownership and mobile usage grow rapidly, yet advertising budgets stayed weighted toward desktop, despite mobile already accounting for the majority of page views on 24.com's sites. Published in 2019, this was one of the first studies to use Brand Metrics data, with 24.com partnering with us to measure the brand lift effect of mobile display advertising, and how format, messaging, targeting and brand size shape the results.

Methodology

The study launched 79 campaigns across 11 brands, using five different mobile ad formats per brand, and served over 26 million impressions on 24.com's mobile web and app. Users exposed to a campaign were retargeted with a short survey, collecting 22,833 responses in total, following a methodology adapted from earlier Nordic research by Schibsted and Lund University.

Datapoints & download hook

Every campaign produced a meaningful positive brand lift, with an average total uplift of 7.9%, and targeting alone boosted that effect by 18%, rising to 38% for purchase intention. The study also found no relationship between click-through-rate and brand lift, challenging a metric many advertisers still rely on. Download the full report to see how ad format and targeting combine to drive results.

Footnote

This case study is attributed to “Media24” (the parent publisher) in its own text, not “24.com” (the digital portal brand). We only have a bespoke company description for 24.com, reused here since Media24 wholly owns it — worth confirming whether you want a separate Media24-specific logo/description instead.

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