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Weekly Top 10: Fastest rising search terms from South Africans on Google

With the help of Google Trends we are publishing the top 10 searched for phrases (minus the sexy stuff of course) by South Africans on Google over the previous seven days.

Khaya Mthethwa – Idols 2012 winner
Rocking the Daisies – music festival which took place this past weekend
Sextrader – adult escort site. Any ideas why it would make the list?

(For past data click here)

Fast Rising searches

Rising

khaya mthethwa	+250%
rocking the daisies	+200%
pirate bay	+80%
saps	+70%
kate middleton	+60%
multichoice	+60%
sextrader	+60%
idols sa	+50%
yellow pages	+50%
94.7	+40%

Top 10 search terms

1. facebook
2. youtube
3. login facebook
4. gumtree
5. google
6. gmail
7. fnb
8. news
9. yahoo
10. absa

* Google Trends is intended for general analysis of volume patterns.
* When you see Breakout listed instead of an actual percentage, it means that the search term has experienced a change in growth greater than 5000%.

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Value of mobile overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the medium term says marketing technologist

by Herman Manson (@marklives) South African born eMarketing technology specialist company Acceleration (not to be confused with Acceleration Media) recently made international headlines when WPP Digital announced it had acquire a majority stake in the business.

The company, launched in Cape Town in 1999, had expanded to offices in Buenos Aires, Dubai, Johannesburg, London and New York and employs 160 marketing technologists. A hundred of them sit in Cape Town. Audited revenues for the year ended 31 December 2011 were US$16.8 million (R141.45 million calculated on an exchange rate of R8.42 to the Dollar).

Initially Acceleration started as a media planning and buying business but thanks to an early relationship with ad server DoubleClick got into the technology solution supplier business while also building a strong knowledge base in analysing and interpreting data. Today the business works not only with Google DoubleClick, Test&Target and are a global platinum Adobe partner

Services on offer include analytics and business optimization, management consulting, marketing campaign support, outsourcing and system integration. For publishers the company offers advertising system architecture, advertising system implementation and integration and related strategic and technical services. Their client list includes The Economist, Sky, UEFA, Fox News, AT&T, Safeway, Standard Bank, ABSA, the Mail & Guardian and many more.

The media business, known as Acceleration Media, was spun off in 2005 in reaction to major media agencies investing in digital capacity and sold to Kagiso in 2008.

Richard Mullins had opened Acceleration’s Johannesburg office in 2000 and today serves as Managing Director, Middle East & Africa (MEA) at Acceleration.

Acceleration opened in Dubai four years ago and it’s become a big growth market for them says Mullins. This is because most major companies active in the Arab world has a presence there. In Africa Kenya and South Africa are the major markets.

On the WPP deal Mullins says that it gives Acceleration access to the broad base of WPP Digital clients and IP but that not much has changed in terms of day to day operations. The company founders all retain a stake in the business and its remains an autonomous unit within WPP Digital.

Mullins says the influx of data aggregators over the past few years have resulted in networks selling the same audiences to business rivals. Brands have now realised that they need to protect their data for remarketing purposes rather than allow rivals to cheaply tread the road they have already travelled.

So Coffee brand X has launched a marketing campaign which attracted an audience interested in premium coffee beans. Aggregators, having tagged the interest from these consumers in premium coffee beans, can now go to rival and say “We know exactly who would be interested in quality coffee beans.” So the same audience gets passed around between the various coffee brands on the back of Coffee brand X’s initial campaign.

Mullins says there are a number of things that can be done to help our clients address the data skimming issues prevalent in the market. This includes making sure that you have the right technology, data agreements and architecture in place. We also ensure that clients are aware of how the data is being used, so that they can make informed decisions with regards to who they engage and partner with.

Consumers are also becoming more aware of their own value to publishers and brands and this will increasingly have to be taken into account by those handling tracking data.

Mobile marketing remains immature, says Mullins, with the tipping point lying not in the numbers of users but in understanding strategy and its power to engage. Mullins says for many consumers in Africa accessing data on their mobiles is still a financial decision rather than an information decision the reason being that bandwidth remains costly.

How does the financial decision vs. information decision consumers have to make impact on mobile marketing strategy? Mullins says the reality is that you need to look at the following factors – who is the target market, what are they using their phones for (in terms of access and information) and how do you as a publisher or marketer use that information to drive value through relevancy and access.

“Currently the cost of engagement is born by the consumer and is a key consideration based on their income level and information / engagement requirements,” says Mullins. “A simple metric is the cost of video vs html – for high LSM’s the video is for entertainment and comes at an high cost, which makes it prohibitive in the current environment for lower LSM’s to engage. For lower LSM’s the information value is evaluated against formatting and network access considerations.”

“If the marketer / publisher is tracking and using the information (read data) at their disposal, then marketers can make some very real decisions about where to invest in mobile and the expected returns that they should see from those investments. This will allow marketers to systematically build an informed strategy that allows them to invest in areas and capitalise on the revenue opportunities that are available, whilst building key insights and understanding for future strategies and engagement, focusing on their customers and their requirements and considerations,” Mullins concludes.

Clients also still defer to agencies who tend to pitch projects based on their own in-house knowledge and skill sets. Clients need to take a closer a look at data to understand what strategy they should pursue in this space.

Mullins suggests brands get a foot in the mobile space soon so their mobile strategy can grow with them. He expects costs to drop over the next two years as well as an uptake in localised search by consumers.

“I believe that the impact and value of mobile is overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the medium to long term,” says Mullins. “Costs will come down and competition for consumers will increase, which ultimately will increase usage and engagement. In terms of numbers it is difficult to estimate as the growth is dependent on so many factors. I would venture to say that within the next 3 years, online usage and engagement with more than double from its current levels.”

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Magazine covers we love (better than Apple maps)

MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them. By media blogger MediaSlut.

INTERNATIONAL

MuLtti CLiqUE, Issue #134

I’m honestly not too sure what this Brazilian title is about but I found the cover image extremely striking (the magazine can be viewed here). And the fact that they open with almost 20 pages filled with Gangnam Style-love, is just awesome.

Eureka (The Times), October 2012

Eureka, the first monthly mass-market science magazine, that’s inserted into The Times, has produced some of the most beautiful and striking covers over the past 3 years. Covers that would make the normal guy on the street want to read more about science. Unfortunately this beautiful “Apocalypse” cover is also their last as the publishers have decided to close the title. You can listen to the final message of the editor below.

To view some of their other beautiful covers click here: http://www.coverjunkie.com/magazines/291

The New Yorker, 1 October 2012

By now all i-something fans know about the big ‘maps’ glitch which are frustrating people to the ends of the earth (I actually think Apple Maps will show that it’s in your backyard). The latest The New Yorker cover illustrates the frustration users have with maps perfectly.

Worth

For a magazine about money and rich and important people, this is a very ‘funky’ cover, as one would think they would go the more conservative route. But I’m drawn to the colours, shapes and object, which makes it all stand out for me.

– The (for now anonymous) blogger behind MediaSlut knows way too much for his own good about media in South Africa. Magazines in particular. His mission is to show when South African magazines might fail, but most importantly, succeed. If you’re looking for a library about South African magazines and news, your one-stop pitstop is MediaSlut. #MagazinesForTheWin

– Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us @marklives and @mediaslut
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Social secrets of the digital divide

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Our society is held back by many digital divides. Those who have computers and those who don’t. Those who have Internet access and those who don’t. Those who create mobile apps in their spare time and those who are over 21.

Seriously, though, the digital divide is real, it’s a drag on the economy, and it exacerbates the gap between the haves and have-nots.

The one digital divide that has been crossed, however, is the gap between those who could afford a communications device called a phone, and those who could not. Today, 80% of South Africans have a phone. That’s the good news. The better news is that, as the average phone becomes more advanced, it becomes a tool to help users cross several other digital divides.

The findings of the South African Social Media Landscape 2012 study, released by World Wide Worx and Fuseware, reveals startling secrets of social South Africa.

The key findings of the research were that, at the end of August, 5.33-million South Africans were using Facebook on the Web, 4,6-million were on WhatsApp ,2,43-million on Twitter, 1,9-million on LinkedIn. A huge 9,35-million were active on Mxit.

Because Facebook does not measure mobile-only usage among those who have registered via their cellphones, however, the full extent of its penetration is significantly understated: primary research by World Wide Worx shows that 6.8-million people were accessing Facebook on their phones in mid-2012.

That was not the biggest surprise, however.

Among numerous statistics about the use of these services, the study analysed the breakdown between urban and rural users of social networks on phones. Those living in cities are classified as urban, and those in towns as rural.

The first surprise was the high penetration of social media in rural areas. While penetration is obviously highest in urban areas, it would be expected to be almost non-existent among rural populations. Instead, the typical penetration of most social networks in rural areas is close to half, and sometimes more than half, that of the overall user base.

So where Facebook has 38% penetration among all adults (aged 16 and over) living in cities and towns, urban penetration is a huge 45%, while it reaches 24% of rural phone users.

WhatsApp, with 26% of the overall market, reaches 32% of urban users and only 13% of rural users. Twitter’s 12% of the market translates into 15% for urban users and 7% rural. The new instant messaging service 2Go, which has 5% market penetration, reaches 6% of urban users and 4% of rural users.

Two networks at opposite ends of the scale buck this trend. For Mxit, penetration is almost the same in both markets: compared to 23% overall among adults, it has 25% urban penetration and 20% rural. By contrast, the most high-end social network (since it’s dependent on owning a smartphone), BlackBerry Messenger, has 17% overall penetration, but rising to 23% urban and falling to only 5% rural.

Clearly, Mxit, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have crossed the urban/rural divide. But the mere numbers do not tell the full story of the narrowing gap.

The most fascinating finding is this: for most social networks, the level of rural penetration today is almost exactly at the level where overall penetration was 18 months ago.

At the beginning of 2011, Facebook penetration of the overall market was 22% – almost the same as the 24% level where the rural market finds itself in mid-2012.

Twitter’s rural penetration reached 7% in mid-2012, which is lamost exactly where total penetration was 18 months earlier: 6%. Even BBM, with its strong urban skew, reflects this trend: its overall market share was 3% at the beginning of 2011, compared to the 5% rural penetration 18 months later.

This means that the rural market lags the urban market by 18 months in uptake of social networking on phones. And that, in turn, means the digital divide is as much about time as it is about technology.

* Arthur Goldstuck heads up World Wide Worx (www.worldwideworx.com) and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.

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The ugly truth about advertising (as told by David Nobay)

by Herman Manson (@marklives) After all the rah rah of the last couple of weeks around the annual advertising backslap it was nice of David Nobay, Creative Chairman at Droga5 in Sydney, to sit us all down and share some of the harder truths of advertising.

He had five of them in fact.
1. Not all clients want great work
2. There are too many of us
3. We lost our exotic
4. We’ve forgotten how to sell
5. We reward mediocrity

Chris Moerdyk eat your heart out. As everybody grabbed for their iPhones to check in on Twitter and see which ECD would be first to denounce Nobay an ‘enemy of the creative industry’ the man himself happily droned on in the presentation that made the seminar worth its 500 bucks.

That would be the grandly named International Seminar of Creativity hosted by the Loerie Awards in Cape Town City Hall as part of Creative Week.

Nobay, noting an arrogance in the trade when it comes to ‘creativity’ and ‘advertising,’ or at least what creative types in advertising consider creative work, says clients often have practical reasons for not implementing your potentially Loerie winning idea.

This is also the problem with award shows today said Nobay – they oversimplify what is considered ‘creative.’ Awarding winning work has become a matter of looking at a piece of work and having an immediate reaction (on the judges part) to it before moving to the next piece.

“We are in this business to make money,” Nobay told his stunned audience, “Or we would all have become artists.” Great work, according to Nobay, is really a moving target, isn’t really tangible and lots of clients are running businesses in maintenance mode, while ‘award winning creative’ has become all about the new.

As a quick aside Nobay suggested that the trade, obsessed with rankings as it is, start ranking clients. This isn’t a half bad idea and would certainly put awards tables in perspective at the next pitch meeting. In fact it would probably take it off the table completely.

Nobay also believes there are too many of us (ad folk). He describes Sydney as ‘clogged up with creative people’ that means smaller pieces of the money pie has to go round to sustain an ever growing number of creatives. It also means many clients no longer need large agencies.

This is also true of Cape Town where there are many freelancers active – including some of the best talent around. Now freelancers are organising themselves into teams with project managers from small agencies managing client relationships and admin and them doing what they best at be that strategy, creative, production etc.

At Droga5, says Nobay, clients can expect to see fewer but more senior people in the room, setting the scene for a more powerful conversation. This is pretty much the strategy brought to South Africa by Mike Abel with M&C Saatchi Abel, which has shot up in little over two years to become a significant agency known for the seniority of the people it’s able to bring to the table.

One of the major shifts the advertising world has struggled to adapt to has been the marketing and advertising knowledge transfer to executive level in the client environment. Complain as much about the juniorisation of marketing departments as you wish, the fact remains that more people on client side understand more about the dynamics of marketing and communication than at any time before, meaning the ad industry has ‘lost its exotic.’

Once clients didn’t know or understand what ad agencies did, but they do now, says Nobay. In its heyday advertising execs could run rough-shot over clients, just watch an episode of the TV series Mad Men, or listen to any of the old timers reminiscing over a couple of drinks. Today even juniors at client meetings undermine agency presentations, says Nobay, who also points out that a middle way need to be found, as neither the Mad Men or the new reality is sustainable over the long term.

Nobay urges to industry to be relevant rather than to try and be special in an effort prove to clients that creative people really are interested in their business and their bottom line.

Nobay also believes much of the industry have forgotten how to sell. Creatives dream creative while really they should be selling stuff. Including their own great ideas! Invest in training staff to sell, says Nobay, which is an interesting (and relevant) space for creative agencies to think about and work in.

Finally, says Nobay, our culture rewards mediocrity. Look no further than Karaoke, where you can be terrible, and still garner a round of applause. Genuine creativity really lives in the dreams of children (who often learn through falling down, and getting up again). As an industry we should also celebrate great failure, and clients should be encouraged to put aside a part of their budget for work they might not normally have commissioned, and to experiment (as Droga5 and Unilever Domestos did with this Australian ad called “Meet Phill Pace”).

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The Gate Keeper: Chapter 18 (In which lunch is shared)

by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…

Things begin to change as the TBWSJWBN hierachy is suddenly and decisively subverted…

Chapter 18

In which lunch is shared

Phil took a last hit on his joint, threw the butt out the window, drove a few times around the traffic circle and then decided to head to the Hyde Park shopping centre for a solo lunch. It wasn’t something he did often, but every now and again eating alone in a restaurant felt right, like the kind of thing an adult with a firm grip on their life, career and place in the world would do.

He slipped past the razor blade Hyde Park moms and their prams and found a table at the pink place just outside Exclusives. Once he was actually seated he felt completely over-stoned. That weed was extremely skunky. He ordered a glass of iced water and downed it all, then asked for a steak roll and sat back to watch the world around him.

It was not a pretty sight.

Three tables down, Tim Broadbent sat alone, an adult seemingly in charge of his life, career and place in the world. Even though the only time he’d been close to a skunk of any variety was on a family holiday in Canada, he was in a state of anxiety similar to Phil’s. His heart was beating too fast, the people around him felt and smelt downright oppressive and, deep down in the lower fathoms of his heart, he was questioning serious things.

It would soon be time to let go, Tim Broadbent was saying to himself. He was pretty much seventy, the mandatory age for board retirement. Yes, they had asked him if he would be willing to give his sage advice for a year or two longer, but really the game was up. His career was now, finally, at long long last, a thing of the past. These days were now those days.

On the one hand, he relished spending more time with his family, walking on the beach and so on. On the other, he questioned how he would survive without the rub of all the youngsters against his life, and his identity. Was he really this old? Was it genuinely all over? He watched a particularly attractive young girl swish past his table and ruminated further.

There was something undeniably positive about being surrounded by youth. Not the youth one has spawned personally, but the youth of the wider world. To work and think and get things done side by side with people in their twenties and thirties. It made one feel alive. He watched the girl’s very pert backside sit itself at the table next to him. Then he realised that he actually knew that backside, and the person attached to it, at whom he was staring.

Vati had bolted from His office like a little girl. She sat for three minutes and twenty two seconds, waiting for him to wake up, and then ran. Straight past Mama E, without a glance, and then out of the office block itself. It was all just too weird. It was barely 12:00 noon on a Tuesday and He was out cold, snoring wildly in his big leather chair. It was too much to even think about.

She hopped over the road and into the Hyde Park shopping centre for some lunch. She sat, asked for a menu and then looked around, only to find Tim Broadbent, that ancient TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande stalwart, gawking at her like she was a Playboy bunny.

Phil chewed on his steak roll, focused, then re-focused, then chewed some more. Yes, it was her. The planets, after all these years, after decades of waiting, had finally aligned. He picked up his plate and walked over to her table at exactly the same time as Tim Broadbent was calling her over to his.

And that is how the intern, Phil the graphic designer and the chairman of the TBWSJWBN board came to share a long, awkward silence before attempting lunch at the Hyde Park shopping centre.

Part 1 -18. Part 19: October 10.
Author: Andrew Miller Illustrator: Lebohang Goge

Spoof ad takes aim at Julius Malema’s tax troubles

ZANews, the satirical puppet TV and web show that comments on South Africa’s news and political landscape, has released a spoof of the latest SA Revenue TV commercial, this time featuring Julius Malema and playing up his tax troubles . The show is produced by Thierry Cassuto and cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro.

SARS ad: Everyone can be good at tax – SARS TV advertisement

ZANews spoof: Everyone can be Good at Tax, even Julius Malema

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Creativity isn’t an advertising ghetto

by Herman Manson (@marklives) It all started well before the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival became the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It was probably inevitable – advertising has spent the past two decades evolving at such a rapid pace that what we thought of as ‘ads’ then certainly won’t hold ground today. The ad industry solved it by replacing the word ‘advertising’ with the word ‘creativity.’

With ads no longer du jour industry award shows are positioning themselves as being about ‘creativity’ that’s lead by ‘creatives’ producing great ‘creative thinking’ and big ideas. Marketing, advertising and creativity have been nicely bundled together and not only changed our lingo but also excluded a lot of stakeholders in the process.

Yet communication today is about a lot more than a Creative Director’s definition of creativity. It’s very much about speed, authenticity, information, accessibility and a host of other factors.

Neil Parker,writing in Fast Company, notes that it’s “a truism that making a brand succeed today requires a bazaar-like variety of skills, that go way beyond strategizing, copywriting and art directing. You need product development, coding, social, customer service design, internal culture transformation and a raft of other crafts… Which means the industry has a problem in its structure, not just its name.”

And get this insight by David MacGregor, co-founder Idealog Magazine in New Zealand, from his review on The Case for Creativity by James Human (who was also a guest speaker at the Loerie Awards this year). “The premise that a well-crafted brand ad will have a greater effect than a rubbish ad ignores the fact that ads are significantly less important than other forms of engagement in the era of Google (the biggest advertising business in the world and not a creative execution in sight). Maybe the whole either-or argument is spurious.”

MacGregor goes on to say “I worry about the introspective obsession with creative vs non-creative ads and the assumption that clever craft is integral to achieving superior status.”

The value of creativity in brand communication is of course the premise on which the just held Loerie Awards award work and Human’s book has been extensively quoted to validate ‘the value of creativity’ and the link between creative awards and the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

Saying advertising is effective because it’s won awards is nonsense. Campaigns do not achieve and exceed the objectives set by clients because they won those awards although they do sometimes win awards because they achieve and exceed the objectives set by clients (if they had been entered into an award category I should add) in a creative way.

This isn’t to deny the relevance of ad award shows to its core constituency. It simply contextualises the place of ‘creativity’ in communication and to highlight the importance of not being blinded by the relative importance of ‘creative’ work in the broader communication mix.

David Ogilvy is attributed as saying “When I write an ad, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so persuasive that you buy the product – or buy it more often.”

Creativity isn’t the exclusive domain of ad land either. It potentially encompasses every aspect business today. As far back as 2004 Fast Company listed as first in its ‘six myths of creativity‘ that ‘Creativity Comes From Creative Types.’

We need to be cognisant of the language we use to describe ourselves and our industry and how it includes or excludes other stakeholders. ‘SA Creatives’ denotes a great many more people that just Creative Directors, or animators, or graphic designers.

Creativity isn’t an advertising ghetto so let’s not talk about it as if it is.

Awards & Rewards: The Loerie debate

Loeries or Lousy’s? by Matthew Bull
So What Have The Loeries Done For You Lately? by Justin Gomes
Charl Thom on the role of industry awards
Why “it’s only advertising” doesn’t cut it by Herman Manson
MarkLives refused media accreditation to The Loerie Award shows (again)
The Value Of Creativity by Charl Thom
The Creative Circle needs to manage relevance, says Chris Gotz
Ad award success no longer sole arbiter of agency and industry respect by Herman Manson
The waning influence of ad award shows by Herman Manson
Finding Cape Town’s Design Voice by Herman Manson

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Weekly Top 10: Fastest rising search terms from South Africans on Google

With the help of Google Trends we are publishing the top 10 searched for phrases (minus the sexy stuff of course) by South Africans on Google over the previous seven days.

It looks like a slow news week over the past seven days. End of the month meant searches for logging into online banking products dominated the list of fastest rising web search terms on Google by South Africans last week.

(For past data click here)

Fast Rising searches

fnb online banking	+250%
absa internet banking	+200%
psl	+110%
www.fnb.co.za	+100%
fnb online	+80%
absa internet	+50%
computicket	+40%
cricket	+40%
fnb	+40%
jokes	+40%

Top 10 search terms

1. facebook
2. login facebook
3. youtube
4. google
5. gumtree
6. gmail
7. fnb
8. absa
9. yahoo
10. weather

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Radio not converting on air audiences into online audience

In light of the recent online radio listenership scandal MarkLives wondered how offline radio stations are viewing internet radio. We caught up with Attila Bernariusz, divisional head of Kagiso Digital, for some insight into where Kagiso sees online radio headed. Kagiso owns majority stakes in Jacaranda FM and East Coast Radio, minority stakes in OFM (Free State), Gagasi 99.5 (Durban) and Heart 104.9 (Cape Town) and an economic stake in Kaya FM (Johannesburg).

MarkLives: Are all your stations streaming online?
Attila Bernariusz: Yes.

MarkLives: What value and functionality does digital streaming add to radio brands?
Bernariusz: With 20% of Jacaranda’s online streams originating from outside of South Africa’s borders, digital streaming broadens the stations reach. With 93% of Jacaranda’s online visitors also listening to the station via another mechanism other than online, digital streaming broadens the stations frequency with its core listeners.

MarkLives: How are you integrating social media into your offering?
Bernariusz: Readers are able to share Jacaranda’s website content socially. Jacaranda’s DJs are able to post content to Jacaranda’s social pages. Jacaranda launched Ja.fm. Ja.fm uses crowd sourcing to allow online users to vote songs up and down the Ja.fm playlist, thereby determining which songs play next – enabling full participation from the audience.

MarkLives: Your digital radio audience is still quite small – what are the barriers to mass adoption and when do you expect them to be overcome?
Bernariusz: Most radio stations in South Africa have not been able to convert more than 10% of their on air audiences into online audience (online audience divided by on air audience). Of their total online audiences they have converted, not all of them listen online. The challenge is access to the internet, and the cost of doing so. As more South Africans start going online (for more than just email and chat (BBM, WhatsApp, Mxit, etc…)) so too will radio stations grow their online audiences.

MarkLives: Would you ever consider building an online only product (station)
Bernariusz: We have – http://ja.fm/

MarkLives: Do you see online only stations as competing with your stations for a mainstream audience in the future?
Bernariusz: Not at all – they enhance the mainstream radio brands. They allow stations to super serve listeners of a specific genre of music e.g. nonstop Afrikaans music through Ja.fm.

MarkLives: What impact will apps have on radio listenership?
Bernariusz: Until apps gain mass market appeal (high percentage penetration of all adult South Africans) they are unlikely to negatively impact radio listenership figures. Radio enjoys mass market penetration amongst all adult South Africans. What apps do enable is for stations to offer their radio listeners in the higher LSMs with tactical engagement mechanisms, typically to attract advertiser spend.

MarkLives: What do you expect to be the impact to be of subscription streaming services like Simfy?
Bernariusz: Subscription streaming will fragment the means with which higher LSM listeners access music (as has the iPod), but Simfy and other comparative streaming services are not likely to impact mass market radio listenership figures until online (and subsequently online listening or streaming services) become ubiquitous.

MarkLives: Can you give us some indication of the digital listenership of some of your radio stations?
Bernariusz: It is important to note that these stats have been referenced in context i.e. relative to the respective station’s on-air audiences, their respective online audiences and their respective collective social media audiences.

For Jacaranda FM:
· Jacaranda FM had circa 19,000 unique listeners (or as close as we are able to determine) listen to Jacaranda FM over the last 30 days (mid-July to mid-August).
· Jacaranda FM’s daily audience was on average 655 unique listeners (or as close as we are able to determine) over the last 30 days.
· The average streamlining session is 43 minutes over the last 30 days.
· On average each unique listener (or as close as we are able to determine) extends their listening experience of the Jacaranda brand by 1 hour 33 minutes per month.
· The “as close as we can determine” means that the best we can determine a person in digital is unique IP addresses. As you know many corporates have 1 public IP address. Therefore multiple employees may be considered as a unique person.
For East Coast Radio:
· East Coast Radio had circa 18,000 unique listeners (or as close as we are able to determine) who listened to East Coast Radio over the last 30 days.
· East Coast Radio’s daily audience was on average circa 600 unique listeners (or as close as we are able to determine) over the last 30 days.
· The average streamlining session is 24 minutes over the last 30 days.
· On average each unique listeners (or as close as we are able to determine) extends their listening experience of the East Coast Radio brand by 51 minutes per 30 day cycle.