Linklove

Who’s who in the SA online publishing Zoo?

// May 11th, 2009 // Analysis

I am busy writing an article with my analysis of the past 2 yrs in SA online media. As you can imagine a fair amount of research and number crunching will go into that. When we as an industry gets caught up in the hype of innovation we look forward with waves of anticipation but seldom look back to wonder if promises of success were met.

So as a byte-size taste and a very short post I trended how particularly SA online News publishers have faired in the period January 2008 – end April 2009. The data is sourced from Nielsen//Netrating and therefore compares apples with apples.

I also ONLY ever look at DOMESTIC traffic. Often publishers in the market quote traffic including overseas visitors which is irrelevant to 99% of our advertisers – which I believe to be unethical.

So here is the Unique Browser growth trend:

	news24	IOL	The Times	MG	iafrica.com	SABCnews
Jan 08	1,000,189	560,034	184,396	208,821	260,363	81,257
Feb 08	1,124,677	588,833	216,211	245,625	262,870	99,066
Mar 08	1,127,797	585,374	221,109	233,125	249,271	94,992
Apr 08	1,202,710	622,873	245,964	252,581	212,959	97,809
May 08	1,241,820	615,067	261,447	252,835	163,768	110,987
Jun 08	1,174,641	580,697	239,346	215,490	164,432	106,078
Jul 08	1,259,141	605,915	242,310	211,765	188,064	101,644
Aug 08	1,311,810	600,499	238,616	218,449	191,939	100,914
Sep 08	1,422,034	622,457	282,398	252,642	96,040	110,748
Oct 08	1,370,744	660,479	266,520	262,882	N/A	114,402
Nov 08	1,125,079	564,829	256,394	227,157	N/A	86,095
Dec 08	1,126,834	503,482	205,432	186,240	N/A	64,257
Jan 09	1,324,837	600,306	252,951	230,392	N/A	60,934
Feb 09	1,409,985	624,206	304,293	255,118	197,559	50,605
Mar 09	1,391,852	677,855	346,720	271,717	206,856	70,652
Apr 09	1,452,209	671,450	338,954	276,480	187,294	84,817

And in graphical format:

Key trends:

• News24 continues to widen the gap between itself and IOL, who has been its long time competitor in the industry. It is a matter of time before News24 passes 1.5 million domestic users in SA – already more than Facebook users in SA.
• The Times, who had been trailing the MG has steadily caught up and pulled ahead to almost 70,000 more than MG who have stagnated. It seems the Times daily strategy and consistent use of quality multimedia content is proving stronger than the MG strategy of innovation with products such as Amatomu and Thoughtleader – which won them initial attention and adoration but unfortunately for the brand -  has not done much to move the needle on local audience growth.
• iafrica.com who remain a well known brand in SA has continued on a path of little success. They have now been beaten out by both MG and The Times.  They will have a tough job to bounce back if ever.  They will need to unlock the reach that the Primedia group has on the airwaves to attract bigger audience numbers.
• The performance of SABCnews is indicative of the organisation and how  it operates. With the SABC’s multiple source of news across radio and TV as well as their massive reach they could be the BBC online of Africa – but tragic as it is – that’s were it stands.

That’s it for now. I will be looking into specific categories – so watch out for that.

G’ night.

Disclosure: Elan Lohmann is the former publisher of News24.com and headed up Sunday Times online in a previous life.