JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday
HIGH telephone costs in South Africa have limited the growth of the local Internet industry, international survey company Nielsen NetRatings reported on Wednesday.
Nielsen NetRatings said in a statement that an estimated 1,5-million South Africans now had home Internet access, but that users only spent an average of four hours and 32 minutes each on the internet in June.
“This is a relatively short average time online by international standards and is attributed to high Internet call costs,” said Nielsen’s statement.
Sixty percent of South African Internet users display a strong loyalty to local Internet sites such as the MWeb and iafrica.com portals.
Nielsen NetRatings’ study found that the most visited websites in June 2001 were MSN sites, the M-Web portal, Yahoo sites, Absa Bank, Microsoft sites, Johnnic e-Ventures, AOL Time Warner sites, the Lycos network, Tiscali sites, and iafrica.com.
“Four of these are South African properties, showing a strong local loyalty from South African users,” the company remarked.
The average advertising banner click-through rate for South Africa in June was 0,65%, twice as high as the rate for the US.
Nielsen NetRatings’ full findings can be viewed as an Adobe Acrobat document at www.nielsennetratings.com/press_releases/PDF/pr_010730.pdf – African Eye News Service