Part 4: Why Online? – Changes in South Africa’s online population in 2008

As we approach the end of our “Why Online” series, we look at an updated article from Nielsen/Netratings last week.

We know that roughly 13% of South Africans are online, a total of 5.1 million people – but if you break that number down, some interesting observations can be made.

Take a look at this graph from the Nielsen/Netratings

E.g. Males increased their share of the ZA Internet population by 3% points to 58% between Dec 07 and Dec 08

• The South African Internet population is becoming more dominated by males – accounting for 58% of South Africans online in December 2008 compared to 55% in December 2007 (+3.2%)
• The audience is also ageing slightly – the older the demographic, the greater the increase in share; the 50+ group increasing their share the most (+0.6%)
• The audience is also becoming more English-speaking centric; not only is it the dominant language (56%) but it has increased its share by the greatest amount (+1.9%)

Andrew Felbert, Nielsen Online, says, “Changes in audience share over time tend to be subtle, however, they are important in indicating future trends in how the audience will look. South Africa’s online population has become more male and English-language centric over the last year as well as becoming slightly older. Whilst the ageing element is natural, as a media becomes more mainstream, it is important that the online industry looks at becoming more encompassing and doesn’t ignore women and non English-speakers – areas crucial for major growth of the medium.

It’s a simple fact that not only are there more people online in South Africa, but they’re spending more time online and viewing more content. Companies and advertisers wishing to get their products and services in front of consumers can no longer ignore the power of the Internet as a major route to making this happen.” Thanks to Nielsen Online for this very interesting information.

The final paragraph here sums things up nicely in terms of why you should consider online as an important part of your sourcing strategy – traditional media has lost a lot of it effectiveness as people are now able to locate content that they are used to, online.

Further to this, it is very difficult to guage an ROI from adverts placed in traditional media – the opposite is true from advertising online.

I cannot wait to see how the above stats will look in a year from now after the major infrastructure changes have taken place in our country.

In our next and final part of the series we will look at how the measurability of online advertising makes it such an attractive proposition for businesses.