Premier news site Daily Maverick offers qualifying startups free advertising

At a time when many online newsrooms are shuttering their content behind paywalls in the wake of trickling advertising revenues, one of South Africa’s premier news sites, Daily Maverick (DM), is launching free advertising packages for qualifying businesses.

Following a successful trial period, Daily Maverick is launching the initiative with the aim of helping small ventures get more exposure. While digital marketing is accessible to large businesses, small businesses are often cash-strapped and forgo digital channels — Daily Maverick reckons its offer is worth about R20 000.

“Small businesses face a myriad of marketing and advertising choices and many simply do not have the resources to get their businesses in front potential customers. In a tough economic climate, budgets are tight for businesses of all sizes, but especially so for smaller companies, who cannot afford the services of an advertising agency to create the adverts and make bookings,” explains Styli Charalambous, publisher of the Daily Maverick.

For this reason, Daily Maverick is offering message and ad creation as part of the package. The design and copywriting of the adverts will be outsourced to a partner company, and will entail the only cost to the small business along with a small trafficking fee.

Considering that Daily Maverick is funded entirely through advertising, we asked Charalambous how Daily Maverick could afford to give away ad inventory for free to fledgling businesses.

“As digital publishers, there is always some inventory that goes unsold, and we thought this would be a great way to use up some of that. As for forgoing revenue, very few of them are actually in the space to be spending a whole lot on marketing anyway, so if we can help them get the stage quicker, hopefully they’ll keep the Daily Maverick in mind when the time comes,” said Charalambous.

Having been a struggling newcomer at one point Charalambous says that the initiative is close to his heart. “SMEs are the lifeblood of the country and the real solution to the unemployment problem in our view. So we’ve always wanted to help and now we’re in a position to do so.”

He also says that the initiative exposes growing businesses to digital display advertising, beyond paid search — most likely for the first time — and that it will hopefully help the industry as a whole in the long run.

“In the heart of the digital age, many small companies are still unsure of the benefits digital marketing has to offer or how to go about putting a campaign together. We want to help them get the most out of their marketing initiatives, providing access to a more robust platform that increases targeting of the right market,” says Charalambous.

To qualify for the advertising package on Daily Maverick, businesses must have an annual turnover of less than R5-million and have a functional website.