10 years of local excellence: A decade of true location targeting and 1st party data

What was the defining moment that made you realise there is a need for a location-based advertising network in South Africa?

Charles Talbot: Since 2010 our companies, WAND Africa and BPS have been partnering with leading global players in the location and directory field: Garmin, Tom Tom, Nokia Maps and Telmap International mapping app. Our dependence on third party AdTek, did not allow us to deliver true targeted campaigns - it was time for Vicinity Media to build its own ad server.

Daryl van Arkel: Growing frustration with selling other people’s technology and the shortfalls therein, such as campaign and reporting turnaround times, and targeting capabilities. A frustrated walk down the street in Greenside discussing these problems, on our daily walk to State 5 coffee shop, led to a life changing comment: “let’s just build our own ad server”. The naivety of the difficulty involved and belief in ourselves led us to a “Just do it” moment.

Neil Clarence: We initially commercialised Nokia Ovi Maps and Telmap through our other entity Location Bank, and the response from brands clearly showed they were interested in the relevance that comes with location. However, we quickly learned that international off the shelf technology wasn't the best suited (this is still the case) and that the local market required a bespoke solution. Our initial plan was to build an ad server to power our existing Telmap advertising product and what we thought would be a six-month project started… and still hasn't gotten close to finishing.

Six months down the line in April 2012 we received a call from Telmap - they’d been acquired by Intel and were being mothballed - so we had half an ad server and no publisher. Finding ourselves at a crossroads we could abandon the location dream and focus on our existing businesses or invest further in the technology and build a publisher network around it at the same time. We rolled the dice in true ‘if you build it they will come’ fashion!

Vicinity Media was officially founded when Venture Capital was raised. South Africa is a notoriously limited VC environment - how did this come about?

Neil Clarence: Through his network Charles organised a pitch to a relatively new private equity player called 4 Decades Capital (4DC), who may or may not be interested in venture capital. The pitch was in a few days, and we didn't have a company name, brand or business plan. We even had to borrow our neighbours’ boardroom because they had a better table for the meeting (we may have had to also borrow a few of their staff to fill desks for optics but that can't be confirmed or denied).

Over the next few meetings, we managed to do a deal with Derek Prout Jones and Mike Pfaff from 4DC who will tell you they took a punt on us and our belief more than anything else. There was plenty of serendipity around the deal as Derek and Mike were interested in the mobile space at the same time Telmap closed down, and at the same time fortuitously Charles bumped into Derek’s old friend at a breakfast.

What were the main challenges you were faced with when starting Vicinity Media?

Daryl van Arkel: The first challenge was finding an actual developer to start building the first iteration and for us to start scoping the platform out. I did much of the initial scoping of the platform such as how a campaign would be set up, how users would target locations, set geofences etc, it was quite an undertaking having never attempted such an involved scope before. Once scoped, the next hurdle was actually delivering a product, our first developer was working part time, so delivery of a decent product was no mean feat.

Once we delivered a working prototype, we were lucky enough to get investors onboard. Our technical challenges didn't get any easier from here though, some poor choices of tech stack and technical partners almost derailed Vicinity Media before it was born. We had spent almost all of the investor funds and didn’t have a decent working solution to show for it. We had to make major cuts and changed technical partners to a local partner who managed to deliver a working platform in a few months whilst running the existing platform in parallel (but we had no access to the existing platform due to a dispute with the technical partner). I liken it to being in a bus without a steering wheel whilst it barrels down Jan Smuts Ave at 100km/hr.

Neil Clarence: At the time we were on a knife edge financially, but had to deliver for our first clients, our first publishers and keep our small team believing they had joined a winner. We’re lucky to have great investors who helped us a lot during those tough times.

Charles Talbot: These early years were a rollercoaster with too little supply and lots of advertiser demand and vice versa. Vicinity Media has worked proactively with South Africa's premium publishers making it possible for us to deliver on campaigns. These publishing partners have walked this journey since the beginning.

Looking back at the past decade, what would you say were your biggest achievements?

Neil Clarence: The launch of the Distance window in 2014/15 was a big deal. It made the Vicinity Media offering real. It's a tough technical thing to do, too risky for the likes of Google at the time and it immediately set us apart. Linked to that was our location tag, essentially technology that allows a non-location aware publisher to pull accurate GPS level location with 6-8 decimals of data, allowing targeting down to street level. Those were the foundations for products and tools like DealFeed, our DOOH product and the Near Me search widget. In more recent times, our measurement approach and the analytics we have brought to DOOH which include local search uplift and location-based website traffic analysis have been key solutions for our client and agency partners.

Daryl van Arkel: Being able to acquire accurate user location on non-location aware sites and thus bring location based mobile advertising to South Africa through developing a location tag, that Neil refers to, was massive. South Africa had no app take up and no local apps with any user base that were location aware. We built the ecosystem from the ground up to be able to do this and scale it. Building Visitability reporting also positioned us differently from normal display advertising.

Ranking first against global location tech players in location accuracy was also a big achievement in my mind that validated our approach.

Additionally integrating with South Africa’s biggest publishers and becoming truly pervasive was another major feather in our cap and validation.

Lastly, building a truly omnichannel product by launching DOOH (CTV coming soon and Audio in near future) was the culmination of a number of years of planning and execution. Further to this being the first and only African Adtech company to integrate with the world’s largest DOOH SSP, Broadsign, is another testament.

With a staff complement of 60, offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town as well as a 100% year-on-year growth in 2017, what would you say was your key to success?

Neil Clarence: The various skills within the founder and management team complement each other extremely well. Our strength is our ability to foresee what the market wants, build it and create a product around it (sometimes the other way around!) and quickly gain traction which allows us to iterate and improve what is often an MVP into an industry leading solution. We’ve pivoted repeatedly (and recently) into the OOH and retail spaces - two recent examples of the above that are seeing us achieve 100% YOY growth in 2024.

Daryl van Arkel: Alot of persistence! A lot of belief in our approach. A lot of educating the market! A lot of innovation! Ability to attract and retain some excellent people.

Charles Talbot: The Vicinity Media “Think Tank” of Daryl and Neil, energising the organisation, building the vision and driving it into the organisation.

What are the biggest lessons that you have learned so far during your journey?

Neil Clarence: Resilience, or simple and absolute stubbornness, is key to success, not even success - its key to survival. When you start out, times are tough, and they quickly get tougher. In our story we ran out of runway quickly due to some poor technical decisions, this led to almost two years of working insanely hard for a company that couldn't pay us a salary. Which can lead to some soul searching when you’re chatting to your employed mates who are starting to climb the corporate ladder. But like any good ‘parents’ we put our heads down, stuck to the task, always made a plan and built a business.

Daryl van Arkel: Things always take longer and are often harder than you anticipate, therefore you can’t just focus on the end goal, or you will become frustrated. I have adopted the mantra: “The journey is the destination” to keep me grounded in the now and appreciating the challenge.

Another big lesson is focus, you cannot do everything, and must try and point your resources at the opportunity you can exploit.

What is your vision for Vicinity Media in the next 10 years?

Daryl van Arkel and Neil Clarence: Our vision for the future is to maintain our 1st party data leadership position and to leverage it to help brands find audiences as digital transformation continues to evolve traditional media. In this regard, we’ve ticked off print, retail and OOH…radio/audio and connected TV are coming soon. The move to omnichannel will continue to pick up pace and then become a rocketship - with Vicinity Media firmly in the cockpit. Once we are satisfied that we have mastered this approach locally we will look to expand into new markets.

Vicinity Media is celebrating its 10th birthday by running a Share the Location competition on all its social media platforms where participants can win amazing weekly prizes as well as a final grand prize of R 10 000 for finding the location. Do not miss out - follow Vicinity Media’s socials and join the journey as they celebrate this momentous occasion.