Smart Africa TV: 44% of Kenya connected, but ad spend still on 2%

by Russell Southwood (@BalancingActAfr) In this interview, Gaurav Singh, chief digital officer at Scan Group, a leading African marketing services group, talks about how an increasing number of Africa’s citizens have access to digital devices (he cites 44% in Kenya) and that soon advertising spending will come to reflect this with a transition to digital online and social media.

News24′s leap into Kenya and Nigeria

by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) Type in www.news24.co.ke to your browser or www.news24.com.ng and you get a site that looks familiar to the South African eye: it has the colour palette and lay-out of our biggest news portal, News24, but look a bit closer and you see the content is different: about Kenya and Nigeria respectively.

These two sites are, in fact, News24’s great big leap into Africa although they have started modestly and without much fanfare so that they can learn about the two markets that are so different to South Africa’s.

You might also have noticed an isiZulu News24 (that you can go to from the English-language portal) and you get the picture: News24 – which so dominates the breaking-news scene in SA – is on the march, which is interesting considering that Iqbal Surve, Independent Newspaper’s proprietor-in-waiting, has also mentioned Africa and the vernacular markets as key growth areas.

Grubstreet spoke to News24 editor-in-chief Jannie Momberg, who is overseeing the move.

Do South Africans still Yahoo!?

Do South Africans still Yahoo!? Indeed they do. According to Apurimac Media, the sales representative for Yahoo! in sub-Saharan Africa, the site receives 1.5 million monthly visitors from South Africa generating 256 million page views.

A role for media agencies in solving the modern media blur

London-based media company PHD Worldwide, a part of the Omnicom Media Group, recently stepped up its investment in the South African market with its purchase of a 70% shareholding in strategic media planning company page three.

Tablets leaking ad dollars to mobile from ‘Net – BuzzCity CEO

BuzzCity is a global mobile advertising network focused on emerging markets. In Africa this Singapore-based company, in which media giant Naspers owns a stake, does substantial business in South Africa (where it also has a sales office), Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. It also sees significant growth in mobile traffic in African markets north of the Sahara.

The next big shift in smartphones

Lurking beneath the headlines of the iPhone 4S launch was a signpost to the next big shift in smartphones – high end devices at low-end prices. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK explores the meaning of a $99 iPhone 4.

[Netprophet 2011] African ecommerce market has a long way to go

A billion Africans and 50 million bank accounts. In South Africa, credit cards are used by only 16.5% of the population (2008). No African country comes close to 1% of total retail spend spent online – the magic figure which constitutes the tipping point for digital retail growth (in SA, ecommerce has a 0.4% share of the retail market, while in countries such as Egypt and Nigeria, the figure stands at 0.01%). No wonder, then, that the ecommerce market in Africa hasn’t bloomed.

Looking at these numbers, many international ecommerce plays have shifted investment in the African market 5-10 years down the line. But where others fear to tread Oliver Rippel, CEO ecommerce Africa & Middle East at MIH, sees opportunity and first-mover advantage.

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