SA's fastest growing websites - Nielsen Online

Engineering News was the fastest growing website in SA over the last year, growing by 190% from 23 455 Unique browsers in March 2007 to 67 924 in March 2008. The overall market has grown by 44% in the same period, 3.4 million to 4.9 million UBs.

Creamer Media CEO Kenneth Creamer says the phenomenal growth of its three websites was due to a combination of being able to deliver high quality, real time news and insight into the key industrial and mining sectors, as well as a strong commitment to fully exploiting both the text-based and multimedia opportunities that online publishing was presenting.

Creamer is particularly pleased with the performance of Polity, given its social dimension underpinned by its mission of "deepening democracy through access to information.”

"I must also emphasise that this strong performance has only been made possible through a vital collaboration with Prefix Technologies, our South African technology partner, which has developed the tools and content-management platform through which we are able to deliver our world-class content," Creamer adds.

Alex Burmaster, Internet analyst at Nielsen Online, comments, “With the focus on consumer media and entertainment, it's easy to forget that Internet is also an extremely valuable resource for the industrial and business sector - and this is shown by the strong performance of these sites over the last year. Sites such as Engineering News and Mining Weekly have grown at around four times the rate of overall market growth.”

Fastest Growing South African Websites*: Mar 2007 - Mar 2008

Rank	Website*	% Unique browsers growth since Mar 07	Unique browsers Mar 07	Unique browsers Mar 08	Publisher
1	Engineering News	190%	23 455	67 924	Creamer Media
2	Mining Weekly	156%	12 034	30 788	Creamer Media
3	Carte Blanche	124%	6 024	13 488	Electronic Media Network
4	Polity	121%	12 472	27 544	Creamer Media
5	Mineweb	115%	5 484	11 794	Moneyweb Holdings
6	SuperSport	103%	143 340	290 290	SuperSport Zone
7	SundayWorld	102%	12 234	24 721	Johncom
8	Sowetan	100%	50 933	101 890	Johncom
9	The Post	92%	4 032	7 742	Independent Online
10	SuperSchools	82%	7 131	12 945	SuperSport Zone

Source: Nielsen Online, ZA Market Intelligence, Mar 07 - Mar 08. *Min requirement = 1,000 Unique browsers Mar 07
E.g. Engineering News had 68,000 Unique browsers in Mar 08, 190% more than in Mar 07.

The most popular South African websites:

• News24 remains the most popular South African website with over 1.1 million Unique browsers in March 2008
  
• Of the 10 most popular websites with comparable data last year, only SuperSport (103%) and Yellow Pages (51%) have a growth rate above overall market growth (44%)

Most popular South African Websites: Mar 2008

Rank	Website*	Unique browsers Mar 08	Unique browsers Mar 07	% Unique browsers growth since Mar 07	Publisher
1	news24	1 127 796	782 835	44%	Media24
2	MSN	747 371	-	-	MSN
3	MWeb	618 133	578 139	7%	MWEB
4	Webmail	599 584	503 793	19%	Interface
5	Hotmail	597 854	-	-	MSN
6	iol	585 374	509 422	15%	Independent Online
7	24.com	518 903	-	-	Media24
8	CareerJunction	310 710	231 136	34%	CareerJunction
9	SuperSport	290 290	143 340	103%	SuperSport Zone
10	Yellow Pages	262 340	174 220	51%	Yellow Pages South Africa

Source: Nielsen Online, ZA Market Intelligence.
Eg news24 had 1.1 million Unique browsers in Mar 08, 44% more than in Mar 07

“The leading sites are dominated by news and email services - they remain the pillars of Internet society. All the leading players have experienced growth over the last year but it's interesting to see that only two, SuperSport and Yellow Pages, have a growth rate higher than overall market growth. The market is certainly becoming more competitive, illustrated by the fact that only two publishers, MSN and Media24, have more than one site in the top 10,” concludes Burmaster.