by Herman Manson. What value would a brand or marketing find in a staff-on-demand platform, you may ask? M4JAM offers access to thousands of consumers able and willing to provide real-time market research, mystery shopping and even product training.
Tag archives: naspers
Motive: Reaching the masses in magazines — pay up
by Jocelyn Duff. You want to reach the masses by using magazines? Simple, use the ubiquitous family stable: Huisgenoot, DRUM and YOU. But hold on — not anymore.
Grubstreet: Weideman — ‘Marketers are cutting back on ad spend’
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) Naspers, the giant multinational that owns Media24, released its annual results recently. Because of its remarkable success in markets such as China, Russia and India, the South African division out of which Naspers grew is often ignored at results time. Grubstreet interviewed (via email) Media24 CEO Esmaré Weideman about how it fared in the greater group and in a tough market.
WeChat South Africa wants your brand
by Herman Manson (@marklives) WeChat, a social media and messaging app backed locally by media giant Naspers, entered the South African market in 2013. WeChat South Africa MD Brett Loubser says the local business spent its first year focused on brand building and gaining traction with new users.
MIH Internet Africa restructures e-tail operations
by Herman Manson (@marklives) MIH Internet Africa is set to close several of its ecommerce stores. This could potentially include Style36, 5 Rooms, SAcamera and Kinderelo. All the affected specialist stores are currently offline, with messages suggesting they are “shut down for site maintenance” purposes.
Naspers results shows strong internet growth
Naspers group has released its annual results for the year ended 31 March 2013. Revenue growth came in at 27% to reach R50bn (from R39,48bn)- mostly thanks to growth in the internet division and revenues from its internet units exceeded that of pay television. The depreciation of the rand also had a positive impact on revenue. Trading profits for the year were flat at R5,7bn as development spend accelerated to R4,3bn.
Equity-accounted associates, Chinna based Tencent and Russia based Mail.ru both reported positive growth and contributed R7,3bn to core headline earnings. Internet revenues expanded 80% to R34,6bn. Trading profits from the internet segment were 44% higher at R6,2bn. Ecommerce revenues doubled to R11,4bn.
How to save TopTV: let customers pick packages of channels at various prices
by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) Don’t be afraid of competition in the market, say the business handbooks, but rather assess you rivals’ strengths and weaknesses. Everyone does this in business plans and it helps new entries in the market or smaller players to spot the gaps and opportunities.
But what do you do when you’re playing in a market that is utterly dominated by one big player – as On Digital Media’s TopTV that was rescued recently in a complex takeover deal by China’s digital pay-TV company StarTimes – found with Naspers’ DStv Multichoice?
Did TopTV ever actually stand a chance?
DStv was already so entrenched in the local market – and across Africa too. It had nailed down that absolutely essential – and enormously expensive – element of pay-TV: local and international sports rights.
And it had the ability (and savvy) to counter the new entry’s threat by putting money into a big marketing drive for a cheaper bouquet, the Compact, to sign up lower-LSM subscribers that were TopTV’s target market.
Brand Journeys: MWeb – not quite ‘just like that’
For many people MWEB is still the big black box, which it launched in 1997, the same year the business was established by MIH Limited (a Naspers company). The big black box, in case you don’t get it, was a box, and black, and offered wary South Africans everything they needed to connect to the Internet via dial-up modem, with the payoff line “Just like that” (I still hear the finger snap in the background).
The commercial Internet was new, exciting, and big business was getting in on the act. The first dot com bubble had yet to burst and MWEB was spending large swathes of money buying up rival ISPs before its 1998 listing on the JSE.
Today it is a friendly consumer brand wholly owned by Naspers. Its pay-off line has changed to Connect & You Can to reflect the growing acceptance and integration of the Internet into daily lives. It serves a user base of over 300 000 subscribers (which is not that much higher than figures available for 2005 – although it has had success in converting many of those to ADSL) of whom more than 200 000 sits on ADSL. They consume 4.5 petabytes (4,500,000,000,000,000 bytes) of bandwidth per month.
Naspers to benefit from Facebook IPO
Forget the Mayans. The real apocalypse in 2012 will come via Facebook, and Naspers will be laughing all the way to the bank.
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.