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

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.