Narratiive released its website traffic statistics for February 2020, which revealed that many records were broken in the South African online news market over the past month.
Narratiive is the official traffic measurement partner of the IAB South Africa and provides accurate traffic and demographics statistics for South Africa’s top websites.
All South Africa’s top online news publishers are IAB South Africa members, which makes it possible to accurately compare readership statistics using a common metric.
The February 2020 readership statistics show that News24 is the largest news publication in South Africa with 9.7 million unique browsers.
This is the highest number of unique browsers ever seen for a news publication in South Africa.
BusinessTech also became the first business publication in South Africa to exceed 4 million unique browsers in a single month.
New measurement standard
While these records are closely linked to higher readership numbers, they were also impacted by a measurement change from Narratiive.
The company updated its measurement tag after a new version of the Google Chrome web browser was launched in February.
The latest Google Chrome browser started to implement strict enforcement of SameSite cookie policy headers in third-party cookies.
This policy requires sites to be explicit about the third-party cookies allowed on their websites – including those from Narratiive.
The company said it anticipated a period of higher unique browser figures with regards to cross-site and whole-of-market de-duplication.
Biggest websites in South Africa
The tables below show the biggest news publications in South Africa and the largest online publishers in the country.
It should be noted that only IAB-affiliated websites running Narratiive’s tracking code are included in the table.
| Biggest South African Publications | ||
|---|---|---|
| Website | Unique Browsers | Page Views |
| News24 | 9,695,651 | 56,176,209 |
| IOL | 7,257,175 | 31,879,962 |
| TimesLive | 6,196,148 | 26,544,315 |
| BusinessTech | 4,372,037 | 10,905,994 |
| The South African | 4,313,191 | 13,095,569 |
| Businessinsider | 4,064,245 | 10,136,563 |
| MSN | 3,908,097 | 32,961,271 |
| EWN | 3,627,056 | 13,820,675 |
| Fin24 | 3,335,250 | 9,692,548 |
| SowetanLive | 3,283,854 | 13,990,895 |
| Citizen | 2,901,961 | 10,021,919 |
| MyBroadband | 2,798,291 | 8,037,987 |
| Maroelamedia | 2,786,609 | 18,422,937 |
| Soccerladuma | 2,583,036 | 26,218,416 |
| Biggest South African Tech Publications | ||
| Tech Website | Unique Browsers | Page Views |
| MyBroadband | 2,798,291 | 8,037,987 |
| ITWeb | 224,798 | 420,876 |
| Techcentral | 214,026 | 375,427 |
| Engineering News | 106,531 | 166,324 |
| Memeburn | 53,566 | 80,789 |
| Biggest South African Business Publications | ||
| Business Website | Unique Browsers | Page Views |
| BusinessTech | 4,372,037 | 10,905,994 |
| Businessinsider | 4,064,245 | 10,136,563 |
| Fin24 | 3,335,250 | 9,692,548 |
| BusinessLive | 1,687,684 | 5,000,634 |
| Moneyweb | 1,445,692 | 4,931,713 |
| Biggest South African Online Publishers | ||
| Publisher | Unique Browsers | Page Views |
| 24.com | 27,242,610 | 420,256,954 |
| Arena Holdings | 10,743,496 | 50,779,262 |
| Caxton Digital | 9,222,648 | 35,853,016 |
| Independent Online | 9,063,625 | 40,676,872 |
| MyBroadband | 6,464,956 | 18,950,533 |
| Vodacom | 6,288,030 | 25,175,667 |
| Primedia Broadcasting | 5,417,932 | 18,603,020 |
| Gumtree | 5,342,108 | 81,974,389 |
| TheSouthAfrican | 4,313,191 | 13,095,569 |
| MediaMark | 3,944,150 | 33,167,165 |
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