Kalahari has been ranked as South Africa’s leading online brand, as a result of its brand awareness and its strong brand positioning.

The “Online Retail Brands Report – South Africa 2013” released by Acentric Marketing Research placed Kalahari ahead of Amazon, Bid or Buy, Woolworths, Gumtree, eBay and Olx.co.

“While Amazon is slightly ahead in terms of awareness, the brand positioning is not as ideal,” said Craig Kolb, owner of Acentric. “Although Amazon is perceived to be a strong performer in terms of the sheer size of its range and long history as a brand, it lacks in other important areas.

“Kalahari’s best performing attributes were fast delivery and easy ordering; although the model suggests it could do even better by focusing on other attributes such as its product range.”

Zando, which only launched in May 2012, was the highest new entrant, ranking ninth.

Acentric ranked 59 brands according to the Acentric Brand Model (ABM) Index, which measures consumer-based brand equity, following a survey conducted in January of this year.

“The index strongly correlates with the size of a brand’s customer base. Nineteen attributes were covered, grouped into 7 major topics. These topics included: Product, service quality, price, functional benefits, delivery type, image and shopping enjoyment,” said Kolb.

Source: www.humanipo.com

Type in www.news24.co.ke to your browser orwww.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.

GRUBSTREET: It looks like you’re mostly aggregating news on the Kenyan site but on the Nigerian one, it’s coming from a local news agency.

JANNIE MOMBERG: Ja,  the content strategy is roughly the same as News24 but we place different emphasis on different parts of it. At News24, we also aggregate and we also use wire copy and our own content and our user content… The difference is that, in Kenya for instance, there isn’t a national wire agency where in Nigeria there is one… so in Kenya we aggregate more  to be able to update the site more…

Kenya has a lot more content from our users than we have in Nigeria. The second-most popular section on the Kenya site is content from users after the national news section.

GRUBSTREET: That’s interesting. And when did you  guys launch these sites?

MOMBERG: Let me give you a little bit of background. About three of four years ago, we looked at how we could expand the 24 footprint… and we decided that we were going to do it two ways: 1). To look at other languages in South Africa, and 2). We were going to look at the rest of the continent… In 2009, the first site that we launched was our Afrikaans site, the idea being that it was easiest to launch because there was so much Afrikaans content available in Media24 (that owns newspapers such as Rapport, Beeld and Die Burger)… and we also launched the isiZulu site a couple of years ago.

So in South Africa, we now publish in three languages.

The other side of it was the rest of continent and we decided we were already strong in southern Africa so let’s look at West and East Africa, specifically Nigeria and Kenya. That was our thinking at the time, and also that if we started in Kenya then we would then be able to apply the lessons to the rest of East Africa – and the same for Nigeria and West Africa…

In November 2011, we launched the Kenya site and we launched the Nigeria site in June 2012… We read up a lot about the two markets but we decided that we were going to have to go in and test the market and learn on the job so we didn’t go in with a big bang.

We’re using the same technology as we do in South Africa so the two sites’ tech side is being managed and maintained from Cape Town. It exactly the same technology and  exactly the same CMS that News24 uses so that we are not over-investing in the tech side…

From the editorial side, we’re  using the same kind of editorial strategy that worked for News24 in South Africa: start small and appoint people in Cape Town and locally.

So we’ve got people in Nairobi and Lagos and Cape Town working on these sites.

GRUBSTREET: And how are they working out?

MOMBERG: The expectation was that it was going to be mostly a mobile audience – and that’s pretty much how it’s worked out so far.

GRUBSTREET: For both Kenya and Nigeria?

MOMBERG: Kenya had 35 000 unique browsers (in February) for the web and mobile had 82 000. Nigeria is a little bit more interesting: the web is 28 000 unique browsers (in Feb) – bearing in mind the website is only nine months old – and mobile 169 000…

The other very interesting thing with Nigeria is that we also launched a mobile application in these territories – and in February that app had 77 000 active users in Nigeria.

BlackBerry is massive in Nigeria and the app has taken off… If you put this together with the mobile and the web, it looks quite promising.

GRUBSTREET: It sounds like it’s growing nicely. You guys must be pleased.

MOMBERG: Ja, but it’s still early days.

GRUBSTREET: What are the competitors like in the two countries?

MOMBERG: My impression is that the Kenyan internet market is a lot more developed than in Nigeria although Nigeria is a lot bigger.

The two main newspapers in Kenya are The Nation and The Standard and they’ve got pretty decent websites – on par with what you find in South Africa. When we launched the Kenya site, those were basically newspaper websites – in other words, they updated once or maybe twice a day. Within a few weeks of us launching with our updates around the clock, they started updating their sites a lot more so they absolutely responded.

I do think it will be a tougher battle for us in Kenya than in Nigeria – in the sense that the existing media houses are on a par with what we find here in SA.

Whereas in Nigeria, there is so much more potential because it’s such a massive audience.

Interestingly, the last stats I saw put both Kenya and Nigeria about about 28% (internet) penetration whereas SA is only about 18%. So there is a natural growth path laid out as, although penetration is at about 30% (in Kenya and Nigeria), there is a lot of room for growth.

In Nigeria, the internet market is close to 50-million people already so that’s a hell of a market they’ve got going there. The biggest website in Nigeria is really just a forum – and they are about the size of News24 in South Africa. Then there are two news organisations – Vanguard News and Punch – and their websites are not on a par with the Kenyan sites.

They’re not bad but they don’t update as frequently and the content is not as good as I’ve seen on the Kenyan sites.

So we’re operating in both markets but if I had to choose one because we could only win in one place, it would have to be Nigeria – because if you can win there, you can win big.

Source: http://grubstreet.co.za

GoMetro (www.gometro.co.za), the mobile transit website and app for South African Metrorail users, has made a marked difference in the lives of the rail’s 3,000,000 daily commuters and has the numbers and growth to prove it.

The SpaceStation, the digital media sales agency who exclusively represent GoMetro, announced that since the launch six months ago the platform has grown to just over 528,000 unique browsers in March 2013 (Google Analytics). Says Gustav Goosen, their CEO: “We are all aware of the phenomenal growth of mobile internet access in South Africa. With this in mind we are particularly proud of GoMetro and the success they have had in providing a real service to commuters. These commuters made 1,561,811 queries for real time updates in the last six months with a staggering 635,221 of those queries made in March alone. This shows us that there is a definite commuter need being met by GoMetro and a growth in demand.”

The platform is designed to provide Metrorail commuters with real-time information including train timetables, line announcements, updates and other key services. The information comes directly from Metrorail’s control centre. The site also shows the next six train times, including predicted time of departure and arrival at destination when consumers input their current and desired location. Data from the last six months show that 43% of users spend more than three minutes on the service per session, showing great potential for engagement.

GoMetro was carefully developed to work efficiently on any device with the sole prerequisite that the phone has an Internet connection. That being said an interesting trend has developed over the last six months. Over 80% of the users accessed GoMetro on Blackberrys while only 8% used Android, 6% Nokia, 1,5% Apple and the remaining used a Windows Phone.

“Our steep growth has come solely from users accessing our mobile site,” says Justin Coetzee, founder of GoMetro. “With Metrorail commuters showing an astounding 100% mobile phone penetration rate (as surveyed) there is massive potential for GoMetro to access their 3,000,000 daily commuters. We are very excited about the growth potential and look forward to the launch of GoMetro 2.0 in June.”

DStv boosts its website traffic by nearly 50% after announcing new prices; News24 remains top website in SA.

Effective Measure released its March 2013 website traffic statistics recently, revealing that News24 is the largest South African website when it comes to local visitors.

Effective Measure is the official traffic measurement partner of the Digital Media and Marketing Association (DMMA), and provides accurate traffic statistics for South Africa’s top websites.

According to the March 2013 Effective Measure statistics, News24 attracted 2.4 million unique South African visitors, edging out the Vodafone Live portal with 2.1 million unique browsers and Howzit.MSN with 1.7 million visitors.

When it comes to total traffic, which includes South African and international readers, Howzit.msn.com reigned supreme with 3.33 million unique visitors. News24 was second with 3.32 million unique browsers and Vodafone live portal third with 2.1 million.

DStv was the biggest climber last month. The DStv.com website boosted its traffic by 44% followingMultiChoice‘s new DStv pricing announcement.

The following table provides an overview of South Africa’s largest websites, based on the March 2013 Effective Measure statistics. It should be noted that only websites which run Effective Measure’s code are listed.

Source: mybroadband.co.za

Nearly 50 percent of all videos initiated within mobile rich media ads are watched all the way through, according to new research from Celtra Inc.

In a review of 150 videos used on mobile ads that ran in the fourth quarter of 2012, Celtra found that more than 730,000 people viewed the videos with 47 percent watching the entire video. The results also suggest that engagement with mobile video is growing with 14.4 percent of viewers interacting with the ad by playing the video, up 50 percent from the previous quarter.

Additionally, Celtra found that 80 percent of videos are shorter than one minute, and 46 percent shorter than 30 seconds — the average video length was 45 seconds. The average play time across all videos was 28 seconds or 62 percent of total video length.

Celtra recently enhanced AdCreator — its rich media ad production, delivery and analytics platform — to include video reporting to measure interaction with video incorporated into rich media ads.

Source: www.mobilemarketer.com

The ever illusive Return on Investment figure for digital marketing and in particular social media marketing is not slowing down the trend of companies throwing even more buckets full of cash at the digital marketing channel. Is this the realization of the post-digital era? Is it because there is now an agreed upon ROI conversion? I personally think it is more the former; but let’s see how the numbers look.

Across the board this year marketing budgets appear to be on the increase when compared to 2012. True this is spurred on by a slightly more positive economic outlook; but I think there is a sentiment from business that they need to invest in finding and nurturing new clients or they are going to get left behind.

Online research company eMarketer released the following stat a few weeks ago which compares US companies marketing budgets (online and offline) between this year and the last.

A staggering 71% of companies are planning on increasing their digital marketing budgets; this could greatly be at the expense of their offline marketing spend as only 20% of companies are increasing their offline spend.

According to this same survey; the split between online and offline spend on average is 35% online and the remaining 65% offline. This is still a huge percentage difference; but when we compare this to a few short years ago when nearly all online marketing budget was “experimental”; this is a monumental shift.

Here is where things begin to get interesting for those who report that digital marketing is difficult to report an ROI.

The numbers in the graph above are rather frightening. Digital marketing is by far and away the best marketing medium to demonstrate a ROI.

I understand in the cases listed above such as “video advertising” and “social media investment” as these are similar to TV ratings and radio ratings (TAMS and RAMS). It is difficult to assign a value to a view of your advert or video; there is no direct and built-in way of tracking whether this view became a sale or whether or not it managed to make them feel more or less attached to your brand.

What I do not understand is how PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing has 43% of respondents saying that they were not satisfied with their ability to measure the spend. Pay per click marketing by its very definition has the built-in ability to track how well or poorly an advert is doing. The medium is intrinsically linked to a website which should be running a form of analytics (Google Analytics; Adobe Omniture); not to mention the built-in tracking like in Google’s Adwords.

The same can be said of email marketing; SEO and so on. I personally feel that there are potentially a few things which are at fault here. (As a caveat I would like to point out that I am definitely generalizing with the following two
statements):

1. Companies are not achieving the results that they are expecting to see in their digital marketing efforts and are rather laying blame on the mediums measurability as opposed to their own methods or potentially personnel.
2. Digital marketing agencies are notoriously good at selling an award-winning idea or campaign that is clever and fun; but not aligned to the business goals of the business. When it comes to the punch; the agency then delivers ROI based on the incorrect metrics to show that the campaign was effective; but it is not delivering the ROI that the business was looking for and therefore companies feel that the medium cannot deliver the correct ROI.

In either case; the future is still bright for digital marketing as companies are clearly seeing its benefits of reach and engagement if not for business goal alignment and achievement.

Source: Memeburn

A Coca-Cola Co. study finds online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales, but online display ads work about as well as TV, said a company executive in a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:think 2013 conference in New York today.

It’s a stunning admission for a company who’s flagship brand has 61.5 million fans, more than any other brand on Facebook. But Eric Schmidt, senior manager-marketing strategy and insights at Coca-Cola, isn’t giving up on buzz just yet. And he cautioned against reading too much into the research, noting that it covers only buzz, not sharing, video views or other aspects of social media.

But when Coca-Cola put buzz sentiment data into the same analytical framework it uses to evaluate other digital media, Mr. Schmidt said, “We didn’t see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales.”

That was at a 95% confidence level, but even stepping back from that high standard, he said showed buzz affecting sales by only 0.01%.

“Is that the end of the story?” Mr. Schmidt asked. “I would say no. This is one study on a set of brands in a particular company within a certain segment of the consumer-packaged-goods industry. It is by no means a generalized result that applies to all industries. ”

Now Mr. Schmidt said Coke is looking to refine how it measures buzz, for example by getting a better idea of how many people buzz actually reaches rather than just counting the raw publicly available comments from such sources as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube.

Coke research was far more favorable for digital display advertising, which it found on average to be 90% as effective as TV at generating sales on a per-impression basis, Mr. Schmidt said. Search was 50% as effective as TV – about the same as out-of-home – with radio coming in between TV and search and print scoring slightly more effective than TV.

One problem Coca-Cola has is determining whether buzz is actually positive or negative in the first place. In one 2010 study where Coke pulled out more than 1,000 social-media messages randomly and had human raters compare them to automated sentiment analysis by one vendor, there were widespread differences.

“When we say it’s positive, the machine about 21% of the time says it’s negative,” he said. “That can cause some problems in our understanding” of how buzz impacts sales.

Machines have the most trouble judging sentiment in longer posts such as those in blogs or Facebook and do much better on Twitter, he said.

It’s important to get digital reach and viewership data on par with TV and to accurately measure buzz in order to get more accurate return-on-investment analysis for all media, Mr. Schmidt said.

“Digital ROI has to be a financial measure that allows us a consistent measurement of business performance over time,” he said, and also lets marketers make informed tradeoffs between media.

Source: www.adage.com

Click-through rates (CTRs) on tablets outperform smartphones by 250% for branding campaigns, but also lead when it comes to direct-response campaigns, which traditionally rely on less resource invested in the ad creative.

The findings from billions of ad impressions across Adfonic’s platform reveals CTRs on tablets, compared with smartphones, rose significantly for branding campaigns based on cost per thousand impressions, compared with cost per acquisition, cost per click or cost per impression.

For branding campaigns especially, for every two clicks on a smartphone, there are an additional five clicks on a tablet, which clearly indicates the consumer’s frustration with the smaller screen size.

The research also reveals that when older users decide to use mobile devices they are much more likely to choose tablets compared with their younger counterparts. Apple iOS tablets appeal to those age 70 to 79, accounting for one in every three ad requests from this group. For the age group 50 to 59, slightly less than 10% of Android ad requests come from tablets and just less than 20% of iOS ad requests come from tablets.

Tablet users are more active in the evening, with 63% of tablet ad requests coming after 2 p.m. Smartphones click more often from midnight through the morning, according to Adfonic. The findings support Parks Associates’ research that tablets are becoming alternatives to controllers and interactive program guides, with more than one-third of tablet owners using apps to search for show-related information or check listings while in front of the TV.

Mobile and the rise of local services, a clear trend highlighted at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference, suggests apps could continue to fragment destinations across the Web. Tablets may prompt more clicks, but apps will generate a mere $8.8 billion in revenue this year, compared with $16.4 billion expected from smartphones, according to ABI Research. Of the combined $25 billion, 65% will come from Apple’s iOS ecosystem, 27% from Google’s Android, and the remaining 8% from the other mobile platforms.

Source: www.mediapost.com

DMMA Measurement FAQ – Quoting of data in Media Releases, any other dealings with the press as well as in any documentation or promotional material

In order to entrench a common measurement standard and make it easier for advertisers to plan and buy online inventory, it is critical that all DMMA publisher members and their respective sales houses or representatives quote the same metrics when referring to their website traffic. Quoting other metrics has the effect of undermining the common standard that we as an industry have worked hard to establish. This is something which the DMMA takes very seriously.

Which data are DMMA members to quote?  The DMMA endorses Effective Measure as the exclusive data supplier to our member base as well as the Effective Measure data as it appears on Telmar, we therefore recommend that members include only EM traffic data in all media and press releases and any documentation or promotional material which refers to traffic data.  Only where certain granular data or data going back to before the EM was utilised is not available may a publisher quote alternative metrics. In that case, the source of that data must be clearly referenced. The Effective Measure data appears in multiple weightings in Telmar so to reduce confusion only the figures from the Effective Measure dashboard are allowed to be used.

Which EM stats need to be quoted w.r.t. website data?  Traffic should always be quoted as a full month (reference to which month is being used), the total for that month from local traffic, across all devices. Members may include total traffic in addition to local but where this is the case, it must be clearly referenced.

Which EM stats need to be quoted w.r.t. mobile data?  Mobile sites may report on total traffic since there are well known issues with trying to use GEO-IP data with mobile devices (many devices go through international data centres and hence cannot be classified to a single country.)

Do we quote most recent EM data?  Yes stats should be most recent data, though we understand members may refer to peak periods of traffic which need to be clearly defined and stated.

How do EM averages work?  Averages are provided through the Effective Measure dashboard and can be daily, weekly or monthly for any period specified. If an average is reported it should be stated that it is an average and what the date range or period of that average is.

In reporting EM figures what should be included? Best practice would be to always include the following:

• Date range
• Total for the range or is it daily, weekly or monthly average for the range
• Local traffic
• All devices, desktop device, mobile device

Am I allowed to quote data from other measurement sources? The DMMA insist on members quoting only Effective Measure data, though when needing to look at trends in growth and needing comparative data which is not available on EM as the DMMA implemented the EM system in April of 2011, members may refer to other measurement sources. These sources need to be clearly stated and only used in conjunction with quoting of EM figures.  However members cannot compare EM to Google Analytics as the data collection methods differ.  Members are welcome to consult EM and DMMA on media and press releases and any other documentation or promotional material where data information is required.  Alternatively, members should send any material quoting other data sources to the DMMA executive for approval.

Source: www.dmma.co.za

Historically, advertisers in the consumer packaged-goods category have been late adopters in digital marketing mediums, investing little until they could prove, for example, that digital advertising can indeed sell soap.

The latest trend that CPG advertisers seem ready to latch onto? Mobile advertising.

Two-thirds of CPG advertisers and their agencies say they plan to increase spending in mobile advertising over the next 12 months, according to an Advertiser Perceptions semiannual survey of more than 1,200 people involved in deciding how ad budgets are allocated. Only 2% of those same CPG advertisers said their mobile budgets will shrink. CPG advertisers are also the most optimistic group about increasing spending in digital video.

Overall, advertisers and agencies said mobile was the medium they were most confident would see increased spending this year, with 64% saying they planned to increase spending in mobile advertising over the next 12 months. Still, a third of that group say ad spending in the medium would remain the same in 2013.

The survey also found that overall advertiser optimism is at its highest level since 2007, as judged by these reports.

As for social media, 49% of those surveyed said they would increase spending on those networks, down from 59% last year. Another 44% said their social-media budgets would remain the same — a bit of a surprise considering that Twitter, for example, seems poised to really ramp up its ad business.

The study also displays a disconnect in optimism and pessimism between marketer and agency. Agencies, for example, are significantly more optimistic in the increase in mobile ad spending than marketers are. At the same time, they are also more pessimistic about national newspaper ad spending than their marketer counterparts.

The survey and its results come with a couple of caveats. First, the results indicate what decision-makers say their budgets will look like over the next 12 months, but spending projections can obviously change. Further, some of the optimism seems to contradict 2013 outlooks given recently by holding company CEOs. Just this month, for example, WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell said 2013 would be a “challenging year.”

Source: www.adage.com