Johannesburg, 30 September 2016: At the inaugural Digital Media Africa Awards organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), Times Media received top accolades for its digital innovations: the TMG 2016 Election app was awarded as the Best Data Visualisation Project, while Wanted Online won as the Best New Product.
Lisa MacLeod, Times Media’s Head of Digital says: “These awards are testimony to the incredible work being done by our editorial and development teams as we reposition all our tech and move into high gear on exceptional product development. We are pleased and proud, and we’re now looking forward to our next release which is BusinessLIVE.”
Times Media’s 2016 Elections web app attracted a large South African audience with 215,670 UBs and 329,517 site visits between 1 and 7 August 2016. Readers performed 43,673 voting registration and voting station checks on the site. On election day and the day after, the site delivered 320GB of data to readers.
Wanted Online (www.wantedonline.co.za) was launched in August 2016 as the new digital platform of Business Day’s glossy lifestyle magazine Wanted. Wanted Online is the only online luxury destination in South Africa to cover arts, entertainment, society, travel, food, style, fashion, watches, jewellery, beauty, technology, business and motoring, all on one responsive and beautifully designed website.
WAN-IFRA's Digital Media Awards are the most prestigious recognition of best practice innovation in digital publishing worldwide. The awards are presented in major regions around the world including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and South Asia. The winners from each region subsequently compete for the World Digital Media Awards. This year's winners in that competition will be announced during WAN-IFRA's World Publishing Expo in Vienna in October.
At the Digital Media Africa Conference which attracted about 360 delegates from more than 16 countries, MacLeod also delivered a presentation introducing BusinessLIVE, an innovative online product for South Africa’s business and financial audiences, which Times Media is launching in October.
BusinessLIVE (www.businesslive.co.za) will consolidate the group’s business content and more, incorporating Business Day, Financial Mail, Business Times, Investors Monthly, Rand Daily Mail, BDTV and Wanted Online. It will also have a premium subscriber paid-for area featuring exclusive syndicated content from the Financial Times, full online access to The Wall Street Journal, and unit trust platform Morningstar.
