Examining the Quartz Africa strategy

Ken Doctor writes for Nieman Journalism Lab about the strategy behind the upcoming launch of Quartz Africa.

Doctor writes, “This Africa initiative follows another launched last May, with Quartz India. That push informs this strategy and shows more nuance of its business model — and its journalistic sensibility — that a casual reading of the Quartz Africa announcement may miss.

“Quartz India, found here for audiences outside the country, started with about 200,000 monthly unique visitors within India. That number has now grown to 500,000. That’s about 5 percent of Quartz’s overall traffic, which surpassed 10 million uniques last fall. As importantly — and right now more importantly for revenue — 10 percent of Quartz’s overall audience, or about 1 million a month, regularly visits Quartz India content.

“Both audiences and numbers offer value, but let’s put them in perspective. Quartz pitches itself as a site about global business, offering a fresh, more casual, often chart-driven perspective on stories and events that others cover. For its larger audience, it’s the addition of coverage about Indian business that adds value — and begins to bring in new advertising buys. Likewise, Quartz will add lots of Africa-centric coverage as Adegoke hires up, and that coverage will be read by Quartz’s U.S. and Western readers. Quartz’s bread-and-butter Fortune 500 native-content buying advertisers can buy all of Quartz, or readership by geography. An advertiser like GE, for example, wants the larger Quartz readership, but has already bought Quartz India and is a good prospect for Africa as that audience grows. Auto, infrastructure, financial services, and tech companies populate the key industry ad targets, says Quartz’s publisher and president Jay Lauf.”