Ads24 High LSM Sunday Package reaches one in five upper LSM’ers. This Ads24 combo solutions offering includes City Press, Rapport and their digital properties including Netwerk24. On average each copy of these Sunday titles is shared by 10.4 people. LSM 8 to 10 are the most avid readers. Although comprising only one in four South African adults, the LSM 8 to 10 market comprises a third of almost all of consumer markets.
These high LSM consumers make up the dominant component of certain markets, such as short-term insurance, motor vehicles, medical aid, investment, banking products, car hire, air travel, travel, gadgets, appliances, and sports equipment. They are heavier users of FMCG products, creating sales volumes. They create an aspirant benchmark and are first to buy new goods and services, creating benchmarks to which the middle market aspires. They are employed, well educated, have more buying power, and keep up with technology.
High LSM Sunday readers have the considerable spending power of R37.8-billion per month. They spend R1.7-billion on groceries every week and R596.2-million is spent on DStv per month, they spent R4.1-billion on clothes and shoes in last three months. These savvy Ads24 Sunday readers spent R88-million on a computer or laptop last year.
In the black higher LSM market ties to townships are still strong, with a lot of movement back and forth. Amongst the high LSM Ads24 readers, 64% have a car in their household. This market has the means to plan for the future, 49% have some form of long term insurance. While 15% of the total population has medical insurance, more than double that, 32% of the Ads24 upper LSM Sunday readers have policies. Ads24 discovered that 46% of these readers say newspapers help them decide when taking out car, medical, home, life, or funeral insurance.
Ads24 through their trade newspaper The Beat drew on the editorial skills of editors of Rapport and City Press to provide insights about their readers and the future of the Sunday press. The face of news and newspapers is changing with technological advances particularly in the high LSM market in South Africa and Ads24 titles have adapted with the times.
Waldimar Pelser, editor of Rapport, South Africa’s second-biggest Sunday title says; “Sunday newspapers in the Media24 stable are uniquely positioned to talk to people who are, by their curious nature, achievers. Millions of them. At Rapport, we engage our community by fighting for them, by speaking directly to powerful decision-makers, by covering stories nobody else would dare to, and by showing what South Africa looks like in all its dizzying contrasts: the craziness, the courage, the scandal, the talent, the hope.”
Ferial Haffajee, editor of City Press says; “The barriers to media entry have been smashed and you don’t need more than a smartphone to be a publisher today. It has been a wonderful democratising moment – the media is no longer the oracle of the agenda. Now, Twitter is the most influential agenda setter. This bird and other forms of social media have upended the media as we know it. Twitter (and its sister news apps) are what hourly bulletins used to be. Radio news is what the daily paper used to be and the daily is what the weekly used to be (or that is how dailies should understand themselves, though not many do).”
“All of which makes weekly editing tough. All the old formulas have been discarded. City Press is based on investigative and magazine principles. There are ample stories to tell as this democracy is sharpened and harnessed. Investigative and in-depth journalism can drive news agendas and shape information. It is where we as City Press place ourselves and it has made us an influencer, according to Media Tenor. Our social-media feeds are significant additional drivers of audience numbers through the week,” she says.
Pelser says; “Readers engage with Sunday papers on weekends, away from the office, at the dining room table, on the patio or in the park. They are relaxed but curious. They have seen (so, so many) tweets or news reports through the week about Greece, Marikana or Caitlyn Jenner, but until Sunday nobody has distilled it all – especially not Twitter, because Twitter has no filter, no bullshit detector, no editors.”
“Every profound tweet is followed by an inane tweet and neither of the two announce themselves. Connecting the dots, going straight to the bottom line, figuring out what it all means: That is our trade and our passion. To separate the wheat from the chaff. To leave out everything you don’t want or need to know and to source, even if it takes days or weeks, exclusive, relevant information, views and perspectives that boost our readers’ already superior ability to say meaningful things in more than 140 characters. That’s what leaders do: They speak in full sentences and influence people by realising what’s going on and communicating this knowledge effectively to peers, teams and markets. We are their partners in making sense of things,” Pelser continues.
Ads24 discovered that the research verifies Pelser’s assertion, 63% of Rapport and City Press readers read the Sunday paper to catch up on the week. The respect and voice of authority held by these upmarket Ads24 Sunday newspaper titles filters through to the advertisers, 63% of these readers say if a brand is advertised in the newspaper, the product has more credibility and 79% believe that adverts can contain useful and important information. Sunday is the best day of the week for leisurely newspaper consumption and there is more time to read, time to relax and enjoy and a Sunday read. This allows for maximum message absorption.
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