SECTOR 2 Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator. 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: 3.2 (2008 = 2.7; 2006 = 1.4) 2.11 The advertising market is large enough to support a diversity of media outlets. According to figures for 2008 provided by AdDynamix, R24.5 billion (US$4.6 billion) were spent on advertisements in that year. This substantial amount maintains the existing media landscape and provides sizeable profits, but is not helping to increase the diversity of media outlets in the country. New, creative and innovative products find it difficult to enter and make it in the market because the advertising industry is controlled by a few executives making fundamental decisions that have far-reaching consequences for all media. Attempts to sustain new high quality papers such as the daily ThisDay or the weekly Weekender – started with the backing of substantial seed funding – failed because advertising agencies did not invest in such new products. Advertisers are also hesitant to do business with media that serve “the lower end of the market”, i.e. the poor. When placing spots in community radios, for example, they will mostly concentrate on student radios and big urban stations. Small rural or struggling stations are being ignored. Radio advertising is mostly sold on stations that have the widest appeal - in Cape Town this is KFM and in Johannesburg it is Highveld. At one stage Highveld alone attracted 15 percent of all radio adspend in South Africa. “If meeting the information needs of rural and poor people is part of media diversity then the advertising market is not large enough. Advertisers target consumers and so it will never be large enough to support media diversity,” a panellist pointed out. 38 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER SOUTH AFRICA 2010