40% of South Africa's programmatic ad spend is wasted and most boards don't know it

The findings come from TrustList, an independent, governance-grade audit platform co-developed by digital transformation agency DY|DXand information-integrity non-profit Code for Africa (CfA), in partnership with IAB South Africa and supported by the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef). The platform brings transparency and accountability to a digital advertising market that now accounts for an estimated R17.8bn annually, representing 40% of South Africa's total advertising spend (IAB South Africa/PwC, 2024).

Based on pilot data across South Africa's leading brands in finance, consumer goods and mobile telephony, analysing millions of impressions over the past year, the audit found that as much as R600m in annual ad spend could be flowing to low-quality or non-compliant inventory.

South Africa's digital display market, estimated at about R1.5bn annually across all display categories including open exchange, programmatic direct and non-programmatic placements (IAB South Africa/PwC, 2024), is where the governance risk concentrates.

Unlike search or social spend, which flows through well-governed platforms, open web display inventory - or what the industry calls "programmatic advertising" - is transacted across thousands of sites by automated placement systems with limited independent oversight. The inverse of this finding is equally significant: the R600m flowing to low-quality inventory represents a recoverable budget for brands to invest in credible indigenous media, simply by applying governance-grade scrutiny to their programmatic supply chains.

What makes this particularly troubling is that it is happening despite substantial investment in third-party brand safety tools. The issue is not a lack of intent but the absence of independent, locally calibrated infrastructure. Global verification platforms are not designed to detect the specific patterns of made-for-advertising (MFA) sites that dominate the South African programmatic long tail. TrustList was built to fill that gap.

"This is not a pricing problem, it's a governance problem. South African companies are allocating significant portions of their marketing budgets into environments they would not knowingly choose. The issue is that they don't have the visibility to intervene," says Geoff Cohen, partner at DY|DX.

The commercial cost is only part of the picture. The audits found that a significant proportion of misdirected spend is reaching sites that actively profit from misinformation, clickbait and manufactured synthetic content, meaning brands are inadvertently subsidising the very environments that undermine consumer trust. The same budget, redirected towards IAB-accredited South African publishers, would reach larger, more engaged audiences while sustaining credible local journalism - a direct reversal of the current dynamic.

The findings also carry serious compliance implications, particularly for JSE-listed organisations. The audit identified instances where FSCA-regulated products were served in at least six non-South African markets, alongside a high concentration of impressions on sites outside recognised quality thresholds set by global industry standards.

"This creates a blind spot at board level," says Cohen. "Programmatic advertising is effectively operating outside traditional governance and risk oversight frameworks, yet it carries real regulatory and reputational exposure. That gap is becoming increasingly difficult to justify."

The TrustList audit reframes digital ad inefficiency as a direct commercial loss rather than a media optimisation issue. In one campaign example - at benchmark rates - R28,131 in wasted spend translated into R112,524 in lost revenue, with an additional R127,064 identified as recoverable revenue per campaign cycle. These are not rounding errors: they represent a quantifiable financial liability on every programmatic campaign running without governance-grade oversight.

"This is where the conversation shifts meaningfully," says Cohen. "CMOs hear revenue recovery. CFOs hear financial accountability. Boards hear fiduciary risk. This is no longer about media performance, it's about financial performance."

TrustList is positioned not as another ad-tech tool, but as shared, open-source industry infrastructure designed to correct systemic failures in South Africa's programmatic advertising market. Developed in partnership with IAB South Africa and SANEF, the initiative aims to provide an independent audit layer across programmatic supply chains while redirecting spend towards legitimate publishers.

Early estimates suggest that while about R600m flows to low-quality inventory, only R300m annually reaches accredited, trusted South African publishers, highlighting a significant imbalance in the local media economy.

"For news publishers, this is not just a revenue issue, it's a sustainability issue," says Chris Borain, executive director at IAB South Africa. "A significant portion of digital ad spend is currently being diverted away from credible journalism and towards low-quality or misleading environments. TrustList creates a mechanism to help redirect that value back into trusted media, which is critical for the long-term health of South Africa's information ecosystem."

"This is not about adding another layer of technology," he adds. "It's about fixing how the market works. TrustList gives organisations a way to interrogate where their money is going and to correct that without increasing cost."

The TrustList findings suggest that governance - not optimisation - will define the next phase of digital advertising in South Africa. For brands, this means moving beyond performance metrics to include accountability and transparency. For publishers, it presents an opportunity to reclaim revenue currently lost to low-quality and non-compliant inventory.

"The industry has spent years optimising for efficiency. The next phase is about accountability. The organisations that win will be the ones that can prove where their money is going and why," concludes Borain.

For more information on TrustList or to arrange time with the team, visit www.trustlist.africa