CYBERTORIAL* In 2013, the Sun newspaper titles have several of highlights to look back on. Daily Sun and Sunday Sun held their own in a volatile economic and media environment. Daily Sun set the national news agenda by breaking stories of events and criminal acts captured on video by its readers, such as Mido Macia brutal assault and murder by cops; security guards assaulting a woman for shoplifting and service delivery protests around the country. The Sunday Sun remained ahead of the pack in delivering celebrity and entertainment scoops.
Daily Sun was voted the best daily newspaper at the Sunday Times Top Brands Awards and scooped various accolades including the Media24 Ton Vosloo award and the Popular Journalism award at the Standard Bank Sikuvile Awards.
Tabloid readers are a fiercely loyal segment of the Sun titles readership, and the pass-on rate for a title such as Daily Sun is high. Together with Sunday Sun, these brands are deeply entrenched amongst their readers and remain one of the most relevant newspapers in the country; a good reason why they should remain a critical part of the advertiser’s medium of communication.
Launching Sun Sharp!
In October, Daily Sun launched Sun Sharp! in Gauteng, a 12-page soccer supplement sold in a bundle with Daily Sun on Wednesdays. Immediately, this resulted in single copy sales increasing significantly on streets and informal outlets.
Digitally the Sun titles performed extremely well. Daily Sun moved over on to the Netlocal platform at the beginning of the year and immediately the title started seeing tremendous growth in traffic. Daily Sun’s mobi site now counts among the top 10 news sites in the country with daily average UBs of more than 50 000. The Facebook following has exceeded the 250 000 mark, making Daily Sun the biggest SA newspaper on social media. Both titles – Daily Sun and Sunday Sun – maintained their leadership positions with a readership figures at 5.5 million and 2.6 million respectively – an audience to be reckoned with.
* Cybertorial is paid-for content.
