Thought leader
These insights about Netwerk24 were shared with media agencies country-wide as part of Ads24’s latest roadshow: #inroADS24.
Afrikaans media has transformed and Beeld, Die Burger, Volkblad and Rapport all have a digital first strategy with the journalists sitting in the Netwerk24 hub. Time is the most important commodity for audiences these days. They want to stay informed and keep up with the news and they have proved that they are willing to pay for credible news in Afrikaans. This is evident from the success of Netwerk24’s hard paywall that was instituted last June. The reason for this is that Netwerk24 offers news you can trust and opinions that matter. The editorial team use the correct tone of voice for their audience and engage them in conversation rather than talking at them.
Netwerk24 is like a premium coffee roastery
A good metaphor for Netwerk24 is that it is like a premium coffee roastery, it wakes you up to the world while being an enjoyable experience. Netwerk24 also offers sugar to sweeten up the offering – for example their coverage of Boer Soek ‘n Vrou. The third most viewed article was the scoop behind Boer Soek ‘n Vrou, “Boer Hennie en Jocobu is onbeplan, maar for real” (Farmer Hennie and Jocubu are unplanned but for real – referring to their romance after the show, having met at an event associated with the programme, as none of the farmers met a wife on the show). This article achieved 160 000 page views by 110 000 unique users, 1500 of them registered a new profile and 80 subscribed after reading this piece. The relevance of this is that Netwerk24 is attracting the DStv audience who watch Kyknet and online users who speak Afrikaans are 62% more likely to own DStv than the average online user. However, they can’t only give our audience sugar, there has to be more, news that can be used, news that matters and can be trusted.
To subscribe to Netwerk24 costs as much as about four cups of decent coffee, R99 per month. Registered users who have not subscribed get 10 free stories a month and unregistered readers get four.
What in the World of News
Click here to watch Ads24’s video series “What in the World of News” interview with Jo van Eeden in which she talks about the key shifts for news publishers and how everything has changed, in particular in terms of access to information and immediacy. She discusses the key issue of trustworthiness and fake news. Van Eeden explores power shifts in the news industry and the influence of digital and social media. She gives her opinion about the future of newspapers and speaks about credibility and the curation of news for a specific market, within the context of an overload of information.
Die stil aktivis (the quiet activist)
Netwerk24 won a Gold Award at the recent Bookmarks in the ‘Craft, News or Feature Writing’ category for “Die stil aktivis” (The silent activist) by Le Roux Schoeman. This project about the dangers of alcohol abuse and foetal alcohol syndrome, took some months to complete and it is this sort of in-depth investigative journalism and the resources that it takes to put something like this together that readers pay for. Click here to watch the video.
Anyone with a smartphone can be a citizen journalist, but that does not make them a credible news publisher. There is so much fake news out there online and on social media that carefully curated, credible news becomes even more valuable. Having said that, getting people to pay for news is still one of the biggest challenges facing the media business and this forms the basis of numerous conversations globally. Netwerk24 is the biggest subscription service with a digital paywall in South Africa, click here to watch a video explaining this in more depth. Having willing subscribers differentiates Netwerk24 from other news publications in South Africa.
The Afrikaans online audience
There are a total of 5.3 million Afrikaans people in South Africa and 2.7 million Afrikaans people access the internet up to 7 days a week, amazingly, there are 2.4 million Afrikaans users on Media24’s Afrikaans websites. Netwerk24 serves 1.2 million (web and app) users per month. Afrikaans people are 25% more likely to access the internet than the average adult South African and Afrikaans readers are big earners (averaging R20 357 pm). Netwerk24’s reach, considering the hard paywall, speaks to the quality of journalism that they are producing. The audience are 62% female and 38% male.
The commercial value of the Afrikaans market
Afrikaans speakers are technologically advanced, 59% of online users who speak Afrikaans at home consider themselves similar to people who are at home with computers and new technology and they are 86% more likely to own a laptop or PC. Ads24’s Afrikaans readers enjoy online shopping and they are 1.3 times more likely to have groceries delivered to their homes. Online users who speak Afrikaans at home are twice as likely the average online user to buy travel tickets, holiday packages, make hotel reservations, and organise travel bookings online.
The Ads24 Afrikaans audience are mobile (this is not referring to their frequent use of a mobile phone), 59% of online users who speak Afrikaans at home have a car in the household. These readers are more likely to shop online: 20% of online users who speak Afrikaans at home have purchased goods/services online; 19% of online users who speak Afrikaans at home have purchased entertainment bookings (movies/shows) online; and 21% of online users who speak Afrikaans at home have purchased tickets for shows or sporting events via the Internet. Security is important to Ads24’s readers, 33% of online users who speak Afrikaans at home have a home security service. All of stats are double the average for all online users in South Africa.
It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee and get engaged with Netwerk24. Ads24 are offering three fantastic package deals as part of their #inroAds24 roadshow: The High Impact Sponsorship Package, The Web and App Package and The Native Package.
Die stil aktivis video:
Netwerk24 video:
Interview with Jo van Eeden:
About Ads24
Ads24 reaches six in ten South Africans, including print and digital readers. Ads24 touches the lives of over a half of all South Africans adults. While it is important to identify the size and segment the audience, looking at how Ads24 engages with its readers, is equally as important.
Ads24 is part of the Media24 Group representing 97 newspaper titles. From Dailies to Sunday papers to locals, Ads24 reaches almost every target segment in South Africa, no small achievement in such a diverse country. The most exciting element is how these titles become part of the community that Ads24 serves.
A news reader is an engaged reader. Ads24 news brands play an important and unique role in the daily lives of their readers. Ads24 sees beyond the numbers, beyond the market segments, to connect with the people on a personal level. Ads24 has the stats, the numbers, but also the insights.
