Market for Internet content grows on higher bandwidth

By Macharia Kamau

Content on the Internet is supreme. This fact is slowly sinking into the minds of Kenyans as they begin churning out materials for both local and international consumption.

And while many are still deliberating on the form and nature of the content they are going to develop, some have already made progress, and are telling how potent a tool the Internet is.

And as sellers meet buyers and carry out online transactions, advertisers buying space for commercials, data vending, and even sale of premium content, firms are doing brisk business and hope to do even better with Internet usage levels growing by the day.

So lucrative is the online content creation business, listed ICT firm Access Kenya plans to market its @home portal as a core product, alongside its Internet provision services and IT solutions.

Petra Somen, the portal’s manager, said the portal, which has been running for about an year now, has been able to steadily growing its income and is currently bringing in over Sh1 million in revenues every month, and expects to grow this three fold by end of year.

Driven Internet

"Content is what has driven Internet globally, and it will not be any different for Kenya… Western content is ok but it cannot work for us, we need to get our own content online for our own consumption, create jobs, and enhance lives," she said.

Portals are platforms that bring together products and information from different sources. They make profit from advertisers, riding on the number of hits an advert gets to broadcast product messages out to the public. Traders also pay for the platform, eliminating needs to set up physical outlets, especially in markets where consumers have taken up e-shopping.

"We are getting 1.26 million hits per month, 90 per cent of which are from Kenya. This shows that locally people are getting into digital thinking, which was not the case an year ago," she said.

She added that the company is currently working on add-ons to the portal that will attract more people to view its content. These include an e-shopping mall, which will use mobile money transfer services as payment platforms, as well as customising the site for easy access using cell phones.

Somen expects the enhancements to increase the number of people visiting the website every month from the current 1.2 million, to over three million in the next twelve months.

Double the traffic

"We are looking at doubling the traffic on the portal by June, and quadruple it by end of year. We plan to invest a lot in marketing, and adding content on the portal," she said.

Somen added that the increase in number of hits would correspond to revenues, and has set a target of Sh3 million per month by the end of 2010.

"With higher speeds, people are starting try new things online. This is a departure from before, when people would use the Internet just for e-mails," she said.

Kenya Data Networks, which was among the first major ICT firms to venture into the online content creation business, said it had seen significant change as Internet gained popularity in Kenya, and users began searching for local content.

"There have been a lot of change in the recent past since people are beginning to see the importance of having their own content, instead of using content from Yahoo or Google," said Vincent Wangombe, marketing manager of KDN.

And though the company has not started working with media buying agencies to place adverts on a full scale, he said there are expectations that once this is done, the portal would contribute a significant proportion to KDN’s overall earnings.

Currently, much of the portal’s revenues come from classified adverts. While it does not disclose the number of hits it gets on its portal, the company said growth has been steady, and is expected to draw more people with addition of more content.

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