With industry commentators mostly in agreement that print media is on the decline – although not dead – it’s not really surprising that most marketers and advertisers are now looking to the Web for the "next big thing". <\/p>\n
However most reports on the state of online publishing today tend to focus on the few sites at the top of the heap; those sites that receive the most visitors and the biggest traffic volumes. <\/p>\n
In South Africa those are the likes of News24, IOL, Mail&Guardian and a handful of other mostly mainstream publishing house products. <\/p>\n
Interestingly, however, while these popular sites enjoy significant readerships and list their page impressions in the millions per month, there are almost as many page impressions generated outside of the top ten as there are by the "big ten". <\/p>\n
According to numbers from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) South African websites generated an average 354 million page impressions in the third quarter of 2008. Of those just 194 million page impressions – or 55% – were generated by the top ten sites tracked by the OPA. <\/p>\n
The remainder of those page impressions – or approximately 45% of the total page impressions – were generated by the remaining 65 websites tracked by the OPA. Which means that there was an almost 50-50 split between the traffic generated by the top ten websites and the readership on the site further down the popularity lists.<\/p>\n
Which presents many interesting opportunities for advertisers willing to think outside of the proverbial box.<\/p>\n