MailOnline, a website of popular English tabloid Daily Mail has entered the African market with the appointment of Ole Media Group’s AddSuite as its first in-market channel partner in South Africa.
TechMoran is yet to establish if MailOnline will have teams on the continent at this stage but the development still stirs the increasingly competitive entertainment and gossip scene which is big business globally and picking up in Africa.
MailOnline International covers UK, US, India and Australia and now Africa. Setting up a team here might not be its first priority as it already has a following and occassionaly covers African news.
James Leaver, General Manager, International, MailOnline said: “With over two million unique visitors per month in South Africa and four million across the region, this is a very important market for MailOnline. We look forward to AddSuite connecting South Africa’s leading advertisers to MailOnline’s highly engaged and valuable readers.”
For now, AddSuite will be the exclusive representative of MailOnline in South Africa and have additional responsibility for promoting and selling advertising for MailOnline in and across sub-Saharan Africa.
As MailOnline’s official reseller, AddSuite will manage the entire suite of inventory, optimising programmatic revenues and driving brand sales with South African and sub-Saharan African based advertisers.
“This is a hugely significant partnership for both AddSuite and MailOnline – a true pioneer in the digital media space. We are proud that we have been selected to help grow the MailOnline brand. This is also perfectly aligned with our strategy of engaging with the African digital audience through the world’s leading brands,” Tim Legg, CEO, Ole! Media Group said.
This is something African entertainment and gossip blogs should celebrate as MailOnline is validating the continent’s market and advertisers will soon have more platforms to choose from and because of its hugely English following, pan-African gossip sites have a new friend on the block making sales for them indirectly.
In June last year, Quartz launched in Africa and has been expanding its team and coverage steadily. MailOnline and QZ Africa are not the only platforms launching here. Huffington Post has a Maghreb arm while Cosmopolitan fully launched online-only editions in Nigeria and said it would expand to Ghana, Kenya and Botswana and then slowly across the continent