Ringier Africa expands media operations across continent

Ringier Africa Digital Publishing’s Pulse expands to East Africa with P Live and boosts partnership schemes for content and promotions. Ringier Africa Deals Group’s DealDey and sister sites expand scope in Nigeria.

Monday 23 January 2017 marks the launch of P Live in East Africa as an extension of the leading new media publisher Pulse and its P Live concept from West Africa - already reaching over 50 million users on a monthly basis.

With headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, P Live will be a brand new independent, nonpartisan news and entertainment publisher for the region, partnering with leading local and international publishers to bring the East African region up-to-the-minute, 24/7 live content - from breaking local and internationally acclaimed news to varied entertainment programs.

Pulse/P Live has seen notable international expansion and in December 2016, Pulse announced the launch of the Men’s and Women’s Health titles for West Africa in the fitness sector. The company has already announced the launch of Business Insider for Sub Saharan Africa, bringing the internationally renowned business title to Sub Saharan Africa.

Curated content

Additionally, Pulse already brings its users news content in partnership with the New York Times and Agence France-Press as well as live sports results with Sportradar. Alongside Pulse’s in-house content production, the publisher therefore acts as a platform of highly curated content.

Doing so on a local and regional level, Pulse/P Live has also closed on a content partnership with entertainment blog Ghafla, which it last year completed a partnership with - to aggregate top East African entertainment content. Ghafla will be integral to the provision of local Kenyan and East African entertainment content to a wide audience on P Live.

As part of its pan-African expansion, Pulse/P Live also launches P Promos, focusing on providing merchants of all sizes, e-commerce or otherwise, even more affordable ways to advertise their goods and services to a wide-reaching audience of millions, online.

In Ghana and Kenya, Ringier Africa Digital Publishing (RADP)’s sister company, Ringier Africa Deals Group (RADG)’s discount ecommerce platforms Tisu and Rupu will merge with P Promos respectively, and will therewith move beyond early-stage e-commerce to offer merchants new ways of reaching a large customer base, under the P Promos brand.

Tim Kollmann, managing director of Ringier Africa Digital Publishing: “Pulse is an independent, trusted and admired new media publisher in Nigeria and Ghana, run by respected local media leaders. With P Live, we are now proud to be expanding these values to Kenya and the wider East African region, relying on international and local partners we collaborate with and are introducing to a large audience in the region. The continued expansion of our publishing activities reflects the growing market for smart, insightful and quality journalism and content in Africa.”

The Ringier Africa Deals Group (RADG), Ringier Africa and Silvertree Internet Holdings’ e-commerce JV, will focus completely on Africa’s largest internet market, Nigeria and its internationally recognised and trusted brands DealDey (products and services); Promohub (product and service promotions) and Lyf (product and services directory).

eCommerce market

Going forward, the group will focus on the thriving African ecommerce market, bringing not only products, but also service verticals to customers, online, through its brands. Already a leader in spa and beauty, ticketing, city services, restaurants and varied flash sales, RADG will invest substantially to build out more functionalities for merchants and customers alike in these areas.

Paul Cook, CEO of Ringier Africa Deals Group (RADG) and partner of Silvertree Internet Holdings, JV partner of RADG, said: “We are fully focusing on the Nigerian e-commerce market - investing in product and service expansion. We define deals as everything that brings good value to our customers and merchants and will not stop to expand until every Nigerian online can enjoy services from DealDey, PromoHub and Lyf, while discovering new merchants and experiences.”

Apart from Ringier Africa Digital Publishing (RADP) and the Ringier Africa Deals Group (RADG), Ringier Africa runs Ringier Digital Marketing (RDM), its pan-African complete digital partner and is setting up Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM), Africa’s leading classifieds group.