Article from BUSINESTECH
Narratiive released its September 2020 statistics, which showed that News24, IOL, and BusinessTech are the largest news publications in South Africa.
Narratiive is the official traffic measurement partner of the IAB South Africa and provides accurate traffic and demographics statistics for South Africa’s top online publishers.
Last month, News24 attracted a readership of 11.4 million unique browsers, followed by IOL with 6.2 million, and BusinessTech with 5.7 million.
The top 10 is completed by TimesLive, Gumtree, EWN, The South African, Citizen, Daily Maverick, and Vodacom.
It should be noted that only websites which are part of the IAB South Africa and run Narratiive code are included in this comparison.
This means that other large websites like the banks, Takealot, and Bidorbuy are not listed.
The table below lists the readership figures for South Africa’s largest online publications, based on the September 2020 Narratiive report.
Top Online Publications in South Africa | ||
Website | Unique Browsers | Page Views |
news24.com | 11,427,703 | 82,954,772 |
iol.co.za | 6,227,819 | 28,469,802 |
BusinessTech.co.za | 5,687,989 | 19,986,654 |
timeslive.co.za | 5,615,460 | 24,247,572 |
gumtree.co.za | 4,398,972 | 84,963,218 |
ewn.co.za | 3,651,642 | 16,162,663 |
thesouthafrican.com | 3,527,961 | 10,223,660 |
citizen.co.za | 3,318,612 | 11,668,842 |
dailymaverick.co.za | 2,828,899 | 11,400,534 |
vodacom.co.za | 2,708,161 | 14,457,904 |
How the lockdown affected traffic
South African online news publications were on the forefront of covering the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
This clearly showed in the readership figures as South Africans flocked to online publications for the latest developments.
There was a big spike in traffic for most publications during the lockdown, which peaked in June and remains at very high levels.
The monthly readership figures for South Africa’s top business publications provide a good overview of this trend.
BusinessTech more than doubled its usual readership during the lockdown, while Business Insider, Business Live, and Moneyweb showed equally strong performances.
The chart below shows how the readership of the country’s top online business publications spiked during the lockdown.