The African consumer and advertising: what they believe, what they reject

One evening, in the family WhatsApp group, an aunt forwards a photo. A product, a price, one sentence: “I bought it, it works.” The next day, two cousins ask where to buy it. That week, the brand may have paid for commercials, posters and sponsored posts. The aunt’s message cost the brand nothing. It is what made the sale.

You know this scene. It already partly answers the question behind this article: what does the African customer think of advertising today?

I wanted to answer it with facts, not impressions. First, I owe you some honesty: on Cameroon, we found no recent public study that directly measures what people think of advertising. What follows is therefore pieced together by cross-checking, and every figure says where it comes from.

Beware of figures that speak for Africa

You may have seen this figure: 71% receptivity to advertising in “Africa and the Middle East”, against 57% worldwide. It comes from Kantar, in 2025. It is accurate. But look at who answered: of the thirty markets in the survey, the only African country is South Africa, and the bloc rests mainly on South Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 2015, Nielsen’s bloc brought together Egypt, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, all surveyed online. Not one country in Central Africa. Not one French-speaking country south of the Sahara.

These figures do not lie. They describe people other than your audiences. At mystiQ, we have made a public commitment: no figure, no reference that we cannot prove. It applies to other people’s figures too.

We believe the people we know first

Wherever trust has been measured, the same ranking comes back. In Nielsen’s 2015 bloc, 85% trusted recommendations from people they know, against 70% for television advertising and 57% for ads on social media. In 2021, worldwide, Nielsen measured 88% for these recommendations, more than for any other channel. In 2026, across fifteen countries, the Edelman barometer still finds that what other people say, unpaid, carries far more weight than what a brand says about itself.

Trust cannot be bought. It is lent, from one person to another.

Here at home, it travels through the family, the association meeting, the tontine, the WhatsApp group. No study has measured this in Cameroon: it is a conviction from the field, not a figure. One clue all the same: in a survey carried out in Cameroon for a report by the GSMA and the Economic Commission for Africa, reported in 2021, 88% of respondents had already bought something through WhatsApp. That is where a brand’s work begins: giving people good reasons to talk about it.

In Cameroon, two audiences in one country

On Cameroon, the most solid data concerns channels, not trust. Afrobarometer surveyed 1,200 adults in February and March 2024: people there get their daily news first from television (46.7%) and social media (41.0%), far ahead of radio (25.5%). Yet across all 38 countries Afrobarometer follows, radio remains in the lead. Cameroon is the exception.

This national figure hides two countries. In towns and cities, 59.8% of adults turn to social media every day for news. In the countryside, 21.2%. Nearly three adults in ten have a phone without internet access, and 28.9% of women never get their news from the radio, against 13.6% of men. An all-digital plan speaks mainly to the cities. An all-radio plan misses some of the women. Before choosing a channel, we look at the real day of a person in your audience: where they are, at what time, on which screen, in which language.

Digital sells, and it wears people out

The phone has become a shop window. In a 2025 GeoPoll survey of internet users in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, 80% say they have already bought a product they saw advertised on social media.

Rejection is growing too. According to eyeo, which sells ad-filtering solutions, 28% of internet users in Nigeria, 32% in Kenya and 35% in South Africa were blocking ads in 2025, and the number of ad-blocker users has risen by 23% since 2023 in low- and middle-income countries. The company puts this down to a wish to save data. And according to the International Telecommunication Union, Africa was still, in 2024, the region where mobile internet is least affordable. A heavy video that plays on its own costs attention and data, and therefore money.

Influencers are seeing the same fatigue. In East Africa, a report by Wowzi Media and Baraza Research, published in 2025, notes growing distrust of exaggerated or insincere recommendations. In Cameroon, an academic study published in 2025, based on 266 respondents, concludes that an influencer’s credibility and resemblance to their audience strengthen the intention to buy cosmetic products. We listen to someone who is like us and who knows what they are talking about. We still need to know who they are speaking for. For twenty years, Cameroon’s advertising law has made this a rule: “Advertising messages must be easily identifiable.” Hiding a partnership goes against this principle.

What audiences punish, what they love

When an ad hurts them, audiences say so. In October 2020, in Cameroon, a poster by the Carimo brand for skin-lightening products showed a woman with lightened skin on a throne, dark-skinned people at her feet, and this slogan: “Put them at your feet”. Internet users and consumer associations were angry. On 22 October, the Minister of Communication gave 48 hours for the poster to be taken down, under the 2006 law.

Elsewhere, the story repeats itself. In South Africa, in 2020, a TRESemmé ad described Black women’s hair as “dry and damaged”: protests, products pulled from the shelves, apologies. In Nigeria, in 2023, Peak Milk played on the crucifixion for Good Friday, then withdrew its message and apologised. In 2025, in a sponsored video for the Nigerian supermarket chain Bokku Mart, an influencer repeated a stereotype aimed at Igbo traders; the video was taken down.

Four campaigns, four wounds: skin, hair, faith, origin. The last one is a reminder that a brand also answers for what the creators it pays say. In Cameroon, the risk goes beyond reputation. The 2006 law prohibits any discrimination based on race, ethnicity or sex, and anything that offends religious beliefs. In December 2025, the National Advertising Council announced that after five years of awareness-raising, the time for sanctions had come.

The same audiences know how to say what they love. In South Africa, according to Kantar, South Africans’ favourite ad of 2020 was the one for Tastic rice featuring the fashion designer Laduma Ngxokolo: the true story of his beginnings, made possible by the generosity of others. In Nielsen’s bloc, as early as 2015, real-life situations appealed more than humour. Here in Cameroon, the press mostly reports on the campaigns that get pulled: we found no recent Cameroonian campaign whose reception has been measured or widely documented. Our successes deserve to be told too.

Language, and above all the mix

That leaves language. In Ghana, in a study published in 2023, the researcher Abena Yeboah-Banin surveyed 1,000 radio listeners in five cities. The result: 45.6% prefer ads in a mix of languages, 24.5% in English only, 21.2% in a local language only. And the preferred language is linked to whether or not people believe the message.

Here in Cameroon, according to a study published in 2017, written advertising in Douala spoke mostly French. The law, for its part, sets no language. Camfranglais and Pidgin could play the role of the Ghanaian mix. No Cameroonian study proves it yet. That is why, when the project allows, we test messages with people from your audience before running them widely. Camfranglais, Pidgin or a local language come into a campaign when they serve the message. Never to look exotic.

What we do with this

So, what does the African customer think of advertising? Where it has been measured, they believe the people they know before brands. They sometimes buy what they see on their phone, and they increasingly block what costs them data. They punish what hurts them. They love true stories. In Cameroon, no public study has yet really asked them the question.

We draw from this a way of working rather than a recipe. Start from your audiences, not from other people’s averages. Ask where every figure comes from. Look for our references in their lives: the street, the market, the music, the language. Tell true stories rather than add local colour. And promise only what the product delivers. In July 2026, the National Communication Council was still condemning ads that claim unfounded healing powers for medicines, even on social media. No campaign can repair a broken promise.

And your audiences: what do they think of your latest ad? Do you know, or do you assume?