There was a particular kind of devotion in making your favourite playlist. Either you were buying CDs for one song, listening to the radio all day waiting to hit record at exactly the right moment, or depending on your age here… using a dual-cassette deck. No matter the device, the pain was the same. The music existed. Getting it all in one place was the work.
The old way simply fell away, and nobody has swapped a CD since.
Then the iPod arrived.
Every song you had ever wanted, in one library. One search, one track, a playlist built in minutes.
The old way simply fell away, and nobody has swapped a CD since.
Hold on to that feeling, because it is the story of commerce media in South Africa right now.
The trouble is that buying it still feels like making a mixtape
A separate conversation and plan with every partner. The same manual assembly, by hand, every time a brief lands. For years the hard part has not been demand but rather getting access to the first-party data audiences at all, and then stitching them together yourself, one partner at a time. We have built an incredible music collection and handed advertisers a stack of CDs.
So while the supply of first-party data has boomed, the budget has not followed at the same pace. Not because brands have lost interest. Because the buying still belongs to an older era, and an older era is a hard thing to fund with confidence
That is the moment we set out to build
With Flow’s Audience Marketplace 2.0, for the first time, an advertiser can find first-party audiences from more than 35 data partners and book them in one place, on one plan, alongside campaign packages: ready-made campaigns from Flow’s partner network, with first-party audiences, channels and setup, fully configurable in one clearly defined package.
The hardest media to get hold of in this market is now something a planner can browse and build in an afternoon.
It is the iPod moment for commerce media, and there is no going back.
This is where the two sides of the market finally meet
For the brand, it is the difference between a brief that takes weeks to assemble and audiences you can find and book in minutes, spend you can plan, see and report on.
For the data owner, it is the difference between hoping the right brief finds you and having your audiences discoverable to every brief on Flow, generating revenue without you building or selling anything new. Demand on one side, data on the other, and far less friction in between.
There is another advantage to this single view
When audiences are planned and bought in one place, they can finally be seen as one play. As advertisers commit budgets for the year ahead and weigh every rand more carefully, being able to see and plan a campaign’s targeting and performance in a single view, rather than piecing together a dozen reports, is the difference between spend you hope works and spend you can prove.
Nobody who built their first playlist ever went back after the iPod arrived. Commerce media is reaching exactly that threshold, and the businesses that make it this easy to buy are the ones who will turn this moment into real spend.
The future of commerce media planning is ready for you.
Browse Marketplace 2.0 here or book a demo and we will walk you through it.
Frequently asked questions
1. What is Flow's Audience Marketplace 2.0?
It is the next version of Flow’s shoppable commerce media marketplace, letting advertisers find and book first-party data audiences from more than 35 data partners in one place. Instead of running a separate conversation with every retailer or platform, planners can browse, select and activate audiences on a single plan.
2. How many data partners can advertisers reach through the marketplace?
More than 35 data partners are available through Flow’s Audience Marketplace, spanning retail, dining, entertainment, travel, fitness and financial services. That range is what turns a single brief into one afternoon’s work instead of dozens of separate conversations.
3. What are campaign packages, and how are they different from booking audiences directly?
Campaign packages are ready-made campaigns built from Flow’s partner network, combining first-party audiences, channels and setup into one configurable package. They sit alongside individually booked audiences, so a planner can choose a fully assembled campaign or build their own from the marketplace, depending on what the brief needs.
4. How is this different from how commerce media has been bought until now?
Until now, buying commerce media meant a separate deal and plan with every data partner, assembled by hand each time a brief landed. Flow’s Audience Marketplace 2.0 replaces that manual, partner-by-partner process with one place to plan, book, activate and report on audiences from across the network.
5. What does this mean for data partners and retailers?
Data partners no longer have to wait for the right brief to find them. Once their audiences are onboarded, they are discoverable to every advertiser browsing the marketplace, generating incremental revenue without the partner having to build or sell anything new.
