Research by the Digital Media and Marketing Association (DMMA) reveals that 39% of South African adults have access to the Internet, meaning Internet users have grown by more than two million in the last 12 months.
Research conducted by the DMMA and Echo Consultancy estimates the total Internet population in South Africa in 2013 grew to almost 14 million users.
The figure was derived from the All Media Products Survey (AMPS) and independently validated by Effective Measure (EM), the DMMA's official measurement provider for digital audience data.
This comes as good news for advertisers, as it reflects a larger Internet audience than basic AMPS levels, says DMMA in a statement.
"We needed to provide our members with a more realistic view of the total Internet population in SA. The validated figure of 14 million users is significant as it indicates that a greater percentage of South Africans are consuming media online than previously reported," says Jarred Cinman, chair of the DMMA steering committee. "This has direct implications for the media mix that marketers purchase."
Peter Langschmidt, MD of Echo and member of the South African Audience Research Foundation board, explains EM derives its figures through tagged sites, which count unique browsers.
"Some users access the Internet from more than one device, i.e. laptop, mobile phone and home computer. EM will count this as three unique browsers, but marketers are interested in reaching people not machines. Therefore, we weighted EM's unique browser data against AMPS' multiple device usage and the EM panel to translate the number from browsers to people.
"In the case of Internet penetration in SA from AMPS, there is most definitely respondent confusion regarding Internet usage, with many respondents not equating Web sites accessed via their mobile phones with Internet browsing. Through recoding AMPS to take mobile access into account, we were able to provide a figure that matched the EM online universe," says Langschmidt.
Cinman says the latest figures come as great news for all DMMA publisher members in particular as it is predicted that ad spend across online channels will grow as a result and marketers will attribute greater weight to digital media.
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