Yahoo! comes to South Africa

Yesterday, Yahoo! announced the launch of a new Yahoo! homepage, new Yahoo! Mail and a new Yahoo! News offering for South Africa.

Yahoo! has announced the launch of a new Yahoo! homepage, new Yahoo! Mail and a new Yahoo! News offering for South Africa. This step brings South African news, sport and entertainment content together with the best of Yahoo!’s international media services to offer Yahoo!’s 2.6 million South African users a deeply personal experience. It also means advertisers can launch their campaigns across our footprint in a matter hours ‚ all in a consistent brand environment.

South Africa is a fast growing internet market with a big opportunity for advertisers seeking to reach audiences online. Yahoo! reaches nearly two in every five South Africans online and the total internet population is growing at about 20% a year. However, digital advertising spend is approximately 2% of the total spend demonstrating the opportunity for advertisers to reach a rapidly growing audience online in a highly measurable way.

Yahoo!’s newly launched offering is a first step towards offering existing and new South African internet users the best possible, personal experiences from South Africa and abroad:

– New Yahoo! Homepage: The new homepage brings together the great South African content together with the best of Yahoo!’s international content. It offers each user a personalised experience thanks to Yahoo!’s CORE engine, which delivers over 13 million different experiences every day and personalizes 2.2 billion modules per day around the world

– New Yahoo! Mail: Yahoo! connects 284 million people around the world to the people and messages that matter most. It brings a sleek, newly designed experience that is twice as fast as the previous version: that is safer, showing a 60% reduction in reports of spam: and that offers a seamless, constantly connected experience across desktop, mobile and tablet devices. It also comes with a .co.zadomain name

– New Yahoo! News: Yahoo! covers daily news, sports, finance, entertainment, science and tech through global partnerships with the likes of AP, Reuters and AFP as well as key South African publishers like TEAMtalk Media, the Mail & Guardian Online, The Daily Maverick and Memeburn.

Matt West, Director Content Partners and Expansion Markets for Yahoo!, said: ‚This is a great opportunity for Yahoo! to bring its existing and new users in South Africa the best of Yahoo!’s services and content alongside great local content. This is a first step ‚ there’s more to come ‚ and we are enthusiastic about the bright future we see for everything that’s digital in South Africa. Internet users are coming rapidly online and Yahoo!’s unique combination of Science, Art and Scale positions us well to work with advertisers and agencies in growing the online advertising here.‚

Will Green, Managing Director for Apurimac Media, Yahoo!’s business development partners in South Africa, said: ‚South Africans have had a close relationship with the Yahoo! brand from the earliest times of the internet. The launch of this new Yahoo! homepage will further deepen this relationship with the best South African and international news welcoming each South African visitor every morning. South Africa’s digital media industry has never been more healthy and, as proud South Africans, Apurimac Media look forward to working with Yahoo! in achieving future success by helping local businesses reach and engage with this large, diverse and growing audience.‚

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