South Africa, June 10 -- WARC's Future of Media 2026 Report opened with a sentence that should have stopped every South African marketer in their tracks: "The established model for media planning and buying is breaking apart, and nobody knows exactly what comes next." Those are the words of Paul Stringer, managing editor at WARC, the global authority on marketing effectiveness.

"For South African brands, the timing of this report matters more than we're letting on, because we have just over seven months until our entire television currency is replaced too," says Cheryl Ingram, founder and CEO of TDMC (The Digital Media Collective). Here, Ingram and Caleb Shepard, Media Director at TDMC, unpack what this means - and what brands need to do...