South African Online Report for July 2013 – based on DMMA member data.

Digital engagement hits the commercial bullseye

The rise of digital content has given the consumer the gift of choice. Whether eclectic or highly specialised, the digital audience has more access to content range than ever before. But while the South African digital masses are viewing more pages with gusto, as Unique Browsers are up by 62.5% and Visits up by 83.5% year on year, the time they spend there is getting briefer. Keeping your audience engaged is now the biggest challenge and opportunity.

Effective Measure research shows that South Africa’s digital nation is spending more time online but across many more sites and significantly heading to their mobile. The core trends emerging are shorter stays pay per page and more access via mobile – the key triggers are brevity and instant access. The winners in this new paradigm will be the publishers that keep their audience sticky and loyal to whichever platform they are on.

Engagement and the notion of stickiness needs to be top of mind for the publishing sector. A disconnect is emerging in the idea of what makes content powerful, from both the advertising and editorial realms, the game has changed and increasingly the old metrics cannot be applied.

What we are seeing locally is that the top ten websites based on Page Views (the traditional success metric) and top ten websites based on Duration (engagement – the new success metric) are completely different. Digital is no longer a popularity contest it’s a commitment test and race for audience worthiness.

To access the report click this link EffectiveMeasure-DMMA-Final Report-July2013