By Christo Volschenk
Some do it on a shoestring. Some put their lines in the water, then sit back to see whether anything bites. Others go in fully committed. That’s how different the big classified players are applying themselves today to the challenge of Africa.

Google is in Africa with portals*, but no physical presence; Swiss media group Ringier is there with portals and local teams, but almost no money (read here) and Schibsted is there with a portal, but no office. Then there is the South African media group Naspers. It has portals, teams and offices in East and West Africa – and pours in ever more resources. Look at this recruitment drive on LinkedIn, for instance.

More examples of “market-unlocking investments” made by Naspers in East and West Africa recently:

In December Dealfish launched a printed, small ads paper in Nigeria and distributed it in city areas. It plans to take the paper national with local partners. We spoke to Dealfish general manager Neil Schwartzman about the portal’s activities.

“We launched a 20-page, monthly small ads paper with ads from our Nigerian site. All the main categories were covered, such as jobs, autos, property, appliances. It was distributed for free by people on rollerskates to people in the city center. The first print-run of 50,000 was financed out of Dealfish’s marketing budget. But, we plan to tap other income sources when we go nationwide.

“Other marketing activities in Kenya and Nigeria include visiting trade fairs, where people are informed about the platform and encouraged to try it out.

“To convert people to platform with a billboard or print ad is very difficult. It is easier with an online ad, but most effective when you do it person-to-person. In our experience, to have people try the portal out, is the best way of converting people.

“In Nigeria listings have been growing faster recently than in Kenya. It broke through the 100,000-mark in January. That could be for a number of reasons, eg. the bigger population, the fact that Dealfish is a well-established brand here and high mobile phone activity. In Nigeria 40 – 45 percent of all our page views come from mobile phones – that’s higher than in Kenya.

“To date the political unrest in Nigeria has not had a negative impact on the business. The recent nation-wide strike in reaction to the major fuel price increase did have a short-term negative impact on the business,” Schwartzman said.

Another “market-unlocking investment”:

“In the past our teams did a lot of listing of ads for others. The team would go out and collect ads, which they then listed for individuals/businesses. We cut back on that recently and now our growth is organic, meaning the listings grow with their own momentum. In addition, Dealfish is testing a project one could call crowd-sourcing. It involves individuals finding ads and listing them for Dealfish. The individuals are paid per successful listing.

“The idea being to educate businesses and individuals and list for them, in the hope that the response to the ads will make the advertisers list their next ads themselves. It’s a conversion strategy (convert from print to online) – they see value and then start doing it themselves.

“Dealfish set certain quality parameters for listings (must be properly described, with price, pics etc) and checks listings that come in from the crowd. Those failing the quality criteria are removed again and the individuals who listed them get nothing,” he said.

Schwartzman said crowd-sourced listings cost Dealfish less than team-sourced listings. “It costs about 3 times more per listing to have your own team do it, compared to the crowd-sourcing way. And even more, when relying on SEM campaigns,” he added.

Apart from a recent online ad campaign run by Schibsted on local blogs and sites (Schibsted’s Nigerian free ads platform TradeStable.com.ng runs an ad on TechLoy.com, a leading African source for breaking technology news) (see halfway down this page), Naspers is the only player investing notable amounts in “converting Africa to online” at this point.

Google has been working to “unlock” African markets for a while now, but to date it hasn’t spent money directly on classifieds**. It has, for instance funded computer science education at schools in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa for the past two years (here). And launched the initiative “Africa, get your business online” last year (read about that here).

On commitment to build classifieds markets, Naspers has it’s nose in front – for now.

* Schibsted is in Nigeria with a Blocket clone called Tradestable.com.ng; Naspers is in Nigeria and Kenya with its free-classifieds portal Dealfish; Google is in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda with its free-classifieds portal GoogleTrader; Ringier is in Nigeria and Kenya with Pigiame.co.ke, a free-classifieds portal, PropertySearch.com.ng and JobFinder.com.ng and South African Junkmail is in Kenya with its free-classifieds portal Junkmail.co.ke and recruitment site Job-mail.co.ke. South African classifieds player PrivateProperty is in Nigeria with a real estate joint venture called Privateproperty.com.ng (here).

** In January Google launched a new mobile version of its GoogleTrader for the countries Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. (Read here.)