South Africans spend most of their time on news and weather internet sites when they are online, a study done in August by global internet media and market researcher NetRatings has revealed.
News and weather sites account for 23% of the time that South Africans spend online, which translates into about 1,1-million hours, with 16% of time spent on media and publishing sites.
“The online sectors where South Africans spend most of their time highlight the power of the internet as an information resource. Almost one in every four minutes online is accounted for by a news and weather site,” said Alex Burmaster, a European internet analyst at Nielsen/NetRatings.
The study showed that the third most amount of time is spent on entertainment (12%), followed closely by travel (11%) and “email, messages and chat” (11%). Six percent of the total time spent online is on employment sites and 5% is on directories and search.
Sports sites account for 4% of the time, with financial services and real estate each accounting for 2% of the time. Eight percent falls under the “other” category.
Burmaster said that it was worth noting that the popularity of a sector isn’t necessarily aligned with how much total time it accounts for. “Employment, for example, is the ninth most popular category but ranks as the sixth leading sector by total time,” he said.
The study also listed the ten most engaging publishers, which account for all the time spent by South Africans online. In order of rank they are Media24 (27%), MWEB (11%), Interface (11%), Independent Online (10%), Career Junction (5%), MSN (5%), Ananzi (4%), Johncom (3%), SuperSport Zone (3%) and Auto trader (3%). Nineteen percent of publishers are not listed in the above top ten.
“The dominance of Media24 in the South African landscape is astonishing when one considers that just over one in every four minutes online is spent on their sites,” said Burmaster. — I-Net Bridge