Second COVID-19 wave results in online news traffic spike in South Africa

Narratiive has released its website traffic report for December 2020, which showed that News24, TimesLive, and IOL are the biggest online publications in South Africa.

Narratiive is the official traffic measurement partner of the IAB South Africa and provides accurate traffic and demographics statistics for the country’s top websites.

The latest statistics show that News24 attracted a readership of 12.7 million unique browsers in December.

It was followed by TimesLive with 7.1 million readers, IOL with 5.9 million, BusinessTech with 5.7 million, and EWN with 4.6 million.

The strong performance of these publications during a traditionally quiet month was fuelled by the news of a second COVID-19 wave in South Africa.

The rise of coronavirus cases saw increased restrictions in holiday hotspots and the country moving to alert level 3 on 29 December 2020.

South Africans flocked to online news portals to stay abreast of the latest developments and find out how their holiday plans are affected by the new lockdown rules.

The table below shows the top 20 online publications in South Africa, ranked based on monthly readership.

The second table shows the largest online publishers in South Africa based on their total readership in December 2020.

Biggest South African news publications

Biggest South African Online Publications
Website	Publisher	Unique Browsers	Page Views
News24	24.com	12,713,534	102,256,275
TimesLive	Arena Holdings	7,065,100	32,172,018
IOL	Independent Online	5,908,994	28,348,853
BusinessTech	MyBroadband	5,709,495	18,001,437
EWN	Primedia Broadcasting	4,589,095	22,328,335
The South African	The South African	3,972,870	11,449,290
ENCA	Sabido	3,539,399	11,099,891
Business Insider	24.com	3,204,763	14,279,586
SowetanLive	Arena Holdings	3,166,146	12,746,337
Citizen	Caxton CTP	2,707,884	10,498,377
Daily Maverick	The Daily Maverick	2,537,701	9,833,785
BusinessLive	Arena Holdings	2,105,323	6,527,433
Maroela Media	Maroela Media	1,991,784	21,278,357
MSN	MediaMark	1,939,067	15,860,826
Netwerk24	24.com	1,622,318	11,729,570
MyBroadband	MyBroadband	1,589,672	5,929,516
Cars	Cars.co.za	1,584,217	19,938,538
Soccerladuma	24.com	1,443,087	21,281,845
Kick Off South Africa	24.com	1,262,200	15,420,671
CapeTalk	Primedia Broadcasting	1,140,262	2,158,433

Biggest South African Business Publications
Website	Publisher	Unique Browsers	Page Views
BusinessTech	MyBroadband Media	5,709,495	18,001,437
Business Insider	24.com	3,204,763	14,279,586
BusinessLive	Arena Holdings	2,105,323	6,527,433
Moneyweb	AME	1,033,445	5,060,504
Bizcommunity	Bizcommunity.com	203,484	686,872

Biggest South African Technology Publications
Website	Publisher	Unique Browsers	Page Views
MyBroadband	MyBroadband Media	1,589,672	5,929,516
Techcentral	NewsCentral Media	234,740	410,415
ITWeb	ITWeb Limited	130,871	240,251
Memeburn	Burn Media	54,757	78,063
Engineeringnews	Creamer Media	33,958	115,400

Biggest South African online publishers

Biggest South African Online Publishers
Publisher	Unique Browsers	Page Views
24.com	19,784,658	389,031,203
Arena Holdings	11,609,423	56,564,277
MyBroadband Media	7,123,015	23,953,400
Independent Online	7,011,682	35,327,942
Caxton CTP	6,278,946	28,715,737
Primedia Broadcasting	5,967,157	26,544,008
The South African	3,977,335	11,454,752
Sabido	3,570,552	11,474,808
The Daily Maverick	2,537,701	9,833,785
DStv Digital Media	2,234,703	16,093,634
MediaMark	2,019,365	16,238,095
Maroela Media	1,991,784	21,278,357
Highbury Safika Media	1,883,977	6,269,167
Kagiso Media Limited	1,764,491	4,627,556
Cars	1,584,217	19,938,538
Portal Publishing	1,542,440	4,694,938
SABC	1,502,149	4,529,070
DAZN Media	1,364,256	14,994,448
AME	1,311,312	6,252,688
Mail & Guardian Online	748,135	1,634,520