By Darren Gilbert

How did this partnership come about?

Over the past few years, Ole! Media Group (OMG) has evolved into a recognised value added services provider to several South African and International media groups. Our existing client base includes Sky, MSN, Yahoo!, Media24, DSTV-Online, IOL, and Fox Sports Asia as well as several mid-level publishers.

We have recently been working with an external strategy consultancy, &Innovation, who were, inter alia, briefed to identify additional international publishing partners. They established contact with MailOnline in London, who were keen to develop, engage and commercialise their burgeoning audience in Africa, in line with their international strategy.

What does this mean for a company like Ole! Media Group?

As you can imagine, we are extremely proud to have been selected by MailOnline as their exclusive South African advertising sales partner and preferred representative in Sub-Saharan Africa. After all MailOnline is the most popular English language online news site in the world and their commercial teams in the UK and US are recognised leaders in monetising digital media. We are hoping to learn much from them in terms of global best practice.

We believe this relationship will also enhance OMG’s position as a significant player in the SA digital media market. For AddSuite, our specialist advertising solutions business, it means a major boost of audience reach in Africa and also cements its position as one of only five Google Certified Publishing Partners in EMEA.

Why do you think Ole! Media Group (and AddSuite) is the right company to partner with MailOnline?

We believe OMG is one of the few digital media partners in SA with the resources and skills to support MailOnline in Africa, not only as a premium ad sales house and remnant monetisation partner, but also in terms of generating additional revenues from native advertising, content marketing, premium programmatic and private marketplace advertising.

In particular we have some interesting initiatives in the area of “Big Data” to create unique publisher datasets for advertisers and target audiences more accurately. Moreover OMG’s dynamic content creation hub and local publishing team are ideally placed to create compelling local (Sout)h African content (editorial, images and video) for MailOnline, should the need arise.

What will you be providing for MailOnline?

Initially our focus will be to drive advertising and commercial revenues for MailOnline in South and sub-Saharan Africa. As indicated above, we do have the resources to extend this remit – the group employs a team of around 110 digital media professionals in SA – but first we are aiming to establish MailOnline as a “must-have”, integral component in digital media planning schedules and as a pioneer in innovative ways of engaging digital audiences

With this deal done, where to next for Ole! Media Group?

The MailOnline deal is another building block in our avowed strategy to create SA’s (and Africa’s) leading independent digital media and marketing organisation. We see ourselves as facilitators of the relationship between businesses and digital consumers. Our aim is to build communities for, and deliver engaged audiences to, brands through managing their owned, earned and paid media. We achieve this by developing holistic, content-led digital engagement marketing strategies and then reaching consumers through our network of premium publishing partners and our preferred relationships with leading advertising networks and platforms.

We have a number of exciting initiatives in the pipeline and are in active negotiations with additional media partners, agencies and prospective brand clients to expand our reach and drive our growth.

The digital media landscape in Africa is still in its infancy. We are perfectly poised to take advantage of these opportunities.

For more information, visit www.olemediagroup.com or www.addsuite.com. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.