by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) Last year 5FM’s Gareth Cliff struck out on his own and started CliffCentral.com that goes out on web and WeChat. This year Kagiso Media has launched an app curated by Barney Simon — the legendary alternative DJ from Radio 5 days.
Tag archives: Kagiso
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.
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.
Howzit MSN a template for successful localisation, says Microsoft
Following its recent upgrade, Howzit MSN, the South African version of Microsoft’s MSN portal run by Kagiso Media, is being held up as a template for the successful localisation of the global portal.
Gloo eyes expansion to Middle East
Digital agency Gloo is seeing budgets dedicated to digital going up by as much as 50%, says Gloo ECD Pete Case, as corporate South Africa keeps shifting budget towards digital platforms. And it’s going towards more than marketing in its traditional sense, says Case, who cites Spur as one client investing in digital as a means to manage brand material going out to franchises.