Creativity, craftiness and clever coding defined our first-ever AI hackathon.
We’re no strangers to artificial intelligence at 24.com, but the advances in the technology have presented so many more opportunities to play. And play we did when we challenged ourselves during our first AI-focused hackathon – with spectacular results.
For many years, when South Africa’s matriculation results were released, students eagerly searched through newspapers, hoping to find their name among the successful candidates. But thanks to technology, this annual ritual has turned into a digital tradition. Nowadays, students and parents visit trusted online platforms such as the Matric Results Hub, a feature offered by popular news websites News24 and Netwerk24, built by 24.com.
A publication’s voice is what makes it special. With the launch of the News24 subscription service, 24.com took the lead with one of the first uniquely South African home-grown AI text-to-speech voices.
News24 and its family of news sites attract millions of readers and our audience views, on average, over 10,5 million pages daily – the most in South Africa by a large margin (IAB South Africa). Their success grows from creating high-quality, trustworthy and timely content – ‘Trusted News. First’ is the News24 slogan – and behind the scenes, 24.com ensures they are also first in using fit-for-purpose technology.
Elections are always a hectic and demanding period. Journalists must visit some of the many voting sites across South Africa, conduct interviews, and the media must report and analyse results. Politicians agonise over these results. And voters pay close attention to the progress and outcome of one of the most critical events in the country.
If you browse the media site News24’s newsletters section, you’ll find a newsletter called Have we got news for you that differs from its peers; it’s a personalised collection of News24 stories that appear in your inbox daily.
Media24 is South Africa’s leading media company. Its flagship publication, News24, generates over 120 million monthly page views according to GA4.
Mobile apps have exploded from niche software to being one of the biggest ways we enjoy digital services. News24 and the various other sites at Media24 are no different: the new News24 app – launched in February 2020 – is already one of South Africa’s most popular news apps.
In 2014, Netwerk24 started charging a fee for access to certain content, making it available only to subscribers. Netwerk24’s paywall has evolved over the past eight years into the hard paywall it is today. In 2020, News24 followed suit and implemented a paywall. Both websites now offer a mix of free and paid content as part of their business strategy.
Measuring ad viewability is an established and vital metric in the digital advertising industry for both publishers and advertisers alike – advertisers want to ensure they’re getting what they paid for and that their digital campaigns are actually being seen by real humans, and digital publishers in turn need to ensure their ad viewability is of the highest standard, so they can provide that assurance to their advertisers.
