South Africa’s advertising landscape is shifting fast – and one company is leading the charge.
In the past year alone, Flow has emerged as a driving force behind the country’s R4 billion commerce-media market, powering a new wave of advertising built on real shopper data rather than third-party cookies.
Flow’s platform now enables more than 35 major consumer businesses, including Woolworths, ARC, Dineplan, OneDayOnly, Zapper, Howler, and Hirsch’s, to monetise their audiences and launch full-scale commerce-media offerings. The result: South African retailers and platforms are taking control of their own advertising ecosystems — and opening up an entirely new category of media investment for brands.
The Next Big Shift: Commerce Media
If social media was the first revolution in digital marketing, commerce media is the next, projected to become a $1 trillion industry globally by 2030, with the South African opportunity alone estimated at R4 billion over the next five years. Commerce media refers to the fast-growing intersection of commerce and advertising, where retailers and online platforms use their own first-party shopper data to deliver more targeted, measurable ad campaigns for brands.
This shift marks a change in who holds the power in advertising. Instead of relying solely on big media owners, retailers and platforms now own the means of precision targeting — and Flow’s technology is helping them activate it.
“Every month, brands waste thousands on ads that reach the wrong people,” says Flow Co-CEO Daniel Levy. “Meanwhile, the data to fix that is locked away in retailers and businesses across South Africa. Flow is the platform that’s unlocking this data for both.”
The Visionaries Who Saw It Coming
It’s this shift that Flow’s founders, Daniel Levy and Gil Sperling, saw coming years ago.
Before launching Flow, the pair co-founded Popimedia, the company that helped South African brands master Facebook marketing long before social media became mainstream. Popimedia was later acquired by Publicis Groupe.
After the exit, Levy and Sperling placed their next bet early — on what they believed would become the next major evolution in advertising. Years before “commerce media” became a global buzzword, they recognised that the future of media would lie in the marriage of commerce and advertising — and built the technology to make it possible.
Now, that vision is paying off.
A Year of Rapid Growth and Industry Impact
In just a year, Flow has grown from piloting commerce-media solutions with a handful of partners to powering a national network of retail and commerce brands.
Through its Audience Marketplace, advertisers can now browse and book thousands of curated audience segments — from beauty and lifestyle shoppers to dining and entertainment audiences — all with a few clicks.
And the proof points are compelling:
● Prominent South African brands are now spending hundreds of thousands of rand each month across Flow’s audience network.
● Data partners are realising near-100% gross-profit potential from retail-media revenue streams — compared to traditional retail’s typical 20-35% margins.
● The model has effectively created a new category of media investment for South African marketers.
“The technology to make commerce media work in South Africa simply didn’t exist — until now,” says Co-CEO Gil Sperling. “Our proprietary platform packages first-party data into audiences advertisers can actually use across Meta, Google, and TikTok.”
The results are powerful, showing how first-party data can transform campaign outcomes.
Through Woolworths exclusive commerce media offering, Clarins targeted their beauty buying audiences and reached 1.97 million Woolworths consumers on Meta, generating 11 000 clicks to product pages and a 152% increase in online sales.
USN achieved a 3.6× increase in conversions, Diageo saw a 2.94× higher click-through rate, and @home recorded a 3× uplift in conversions using Flow’s Audience Marketplace.
“Until now, getting audience data from other businesses has been nearly impossible,” says Sperling. “It’s expensive, technically challenging, and requires major resources most brands don’t have. We’re eliminating every one of those barriers, making premium audience access a simple e-commerce experience.”
Redefining the Flow of Ad Spend
In just one year, Flow has helped reshape where millions of rand in advertising budgets are going.
Instead of only flowing to global tech giants, ad spend is now also moving into local ecosystems — into retailers, marketplaces, and platforms that own direct customer relationships.
For advertisers, that means precision. For audience partners, it means new, high-margin revenue streams.
And for the local market, it represents the rise of a home-grown commerce-media marketplace built on South African innovation.
“You’re looking at the future of digital advertising,” says Sperling. “We’ve proven what’s possible in South Africa — and we’re now expanding beyond our borders. Every campaign you run from now on can be powered by real shopper data — from the biggest retailers here at home and, soon, abroad.”
As Flow closes out 2025, it’s expanding its platform with new data partners and integrations across retail, entertainment, and finance — building on the success of major partnerships with Woolworths, ARC, Dineplan, and OneDayOnly. At the same time, Flow is bringing significant advertiser demand for first-party data audiences, with more brands and agencies activating campaigns through its growing Audience Marketplace each month.
Its vision is bold: to make first-party audience access as easy and accessible as buying ads on social media — while giving businesses a unique opportunity to turn their data into a sustainable revenue stream.
It’s a fitting story for Entrepreneur Month — one that proves South African founders aren’t just following trends; they’re helping to shape them.
From Facebook to Flow, Levy and Sperling’s journey shows that the next big shift in advertising doesn’t have to start in Silicon Valley — it can start right here.
