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Subscriber drive leads to heady growthTHE Audit Bureau of Internet Standards audit of South African Web sites for the period October to December 1997 showed a growth in Internet usage. Impressions or page views of the big six Web sites covered by the audit grew on average by 64% over the previous quarter, with just over six million impressions recorded. The growth is somewhat distorted by the huge leap forward in traffic to the M-Web site, which experienced a 149% increase in impressions. M-Web's Big Black Box marketing drive for subscribers is clearly being felt on its Web site, too. M-Web jumped from fourth to second place in the ranking of leading Web sites, moving ahead of both the Ananzi search engine and the electronic Mail & Guardian. M-Web also has a controlling interest in the electronic newspaper which delivered a monthly average of 800 000 impressions and closed the gap with market leader iAfrica.com in terms of total impressions, and thus advertising inventory, under its control. The quarterly figures, however, mask the real growth in M-Web traffic on a month-by-month basis. By December, M-Web/eM&G had a lead over iAfrica, recording total impressions of 2.6 million as against iAfrica's 2.2 million. The M-Web network is thus the largest online publishing operation in the country. This was despite iAfrica recording growth of over 70% during the last quarter. Good increases were also experienced by the Times Media Limited and Nasweb sites, showing 50% and 60% growth respectively. TML's various sites (Business Day, Business Times, Financial Mail and Net Assets) have been consolidated in this analysis to make a fair comparison with Nasweb, though TML provides separate audits for each of these sites. Net Assets, TML's hub site, was the star of the audit period, scoring an 850% increase in impressions, though off a tiny base (from 8 800 impressions). Growth in page views at the electronic Mail & Guardian was 24% (though this figure should be a bit higher as the December audit excluded the newspaper's archive). It is nonetheless noteworthy that the electronic Mail & Guardian commands the same number of page views as the combined impressions of all the TML and Nasweb sites. The Ananzi search engine, which dropped to third place, recorded a 39% growth in page views, enabling it to break the million-impressions barrier. Ananzi's drop in the rankings means that the Internet service provider-owned content sites (M-Web and iAfrica), now command the leading positions as online publishers in South Africa. Their success highlights the increasing power of internet service providers in the online content business. They are able to drive significantly higher page impressions than "stand-alone" sites. M-Web, in particular, has shown heady growth as a result of its subscriber drive. Says M-Web Interactive general manager Bruce Cohen: "Analysis of the ABIS audit should include a depth ratio, a metric which measures the degree of travel through a Web site, and as such gives an indication whether sites are able to leverage more impressions - and thus more ad inventory - out of each visitor."
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