Ronald

20fourLabs is excited to announce the launch of the News24 Android application.

Android users can now access breaking news, sport and lifestyle information from South Africa’s leading digital publisher, 24.com, quickly and easily on their Android handsets.
… Continue Reading

Cathryn

When News24’s new look launched on June 1, any problem to do with the workings of the site, and of our new content management system was going to be on my head.

The truth is News24’s redesign project took almost three years - and most of that time was spent waiting to hear when we could start development, and whether or not we could launch on 24.com’s new in-house CMS. News24 had been running on a Vignette platform for several years, and there was real debate as to whether or not a redesign would include the conversion to our new CMS or if that would come at a later stage. By the end of 2008 it was clear; we were going to launch both at the same time. A new-look News24 on a new-look CMS. And it would be my job to make sure all editorial requirements were met. … Continue Reading

News24’s iPhone app launched about a month ago, and the uptake has been pretty good as of late. Although the uptake decreases with time, it’s amazing how much time is spent within the application. I’m going to show you a snippet of info pertaining to the last 3 weeks of usage.

I find it astonishing that 6250 uniques over a period of 3 weeks are able to spend 1 year and 105 days within the application. That’s an average of 1.7 hours per visitor in 2 weeks. Woah… That’s not so bad.

iPhone users are heavy internet users and this proves it. Although they are a small % of the market make up, they are the ones who are consuming the most.

Compare this to our m.24.com WAP offering, where the average time spent per visit is in the region of 3-4 minutes! Obviously, the WAP offering appeals to a wider audience, of which a large part would fall under the lower LSM categories. M.24.com’s properties are generating in the reagion of 100-110k unique visitors a month with approximately 1.3 million page impressions. A lot more than the iPhone app.

This leaves the question, who are advertisers after? How efficient is it to purchase advertising based purely on stats (Obviously it depends on the product / service being advertised). I think this confirms my solid belief in advertising by way of branded mobile applications as opposed to slapping a banner on a WAP site purely because of it’s numbers.

What do you think?

Posted first on http://www.sessa.co.za