Internet2.03.2020

South African online news records smashed

Largest websites in South Africa on all devices

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

Now read: The top 25 South African websites

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