Launched in Johannesburg mid-2014, NovusOnline is headed by Joe Hamman, no stranger to the world of online monitoring. Hamman, founder and director of the company, has over eight years’ experience in the monitoring field.

“I felt the time was right to offer marketing communications specialists and agencies a locally developed and managed monitoring service. The recent Post Office strike has put even more pressure onto agencies and companies to monitor, measure and track the digital world.

“Print publications scrambled to create digital versions of their print versions as they encountered non-delivery by the Post Office, horrendous costs of trying to hand deliver print versions of their publications, and to ensure advertisers and communications workers were still able to measure the reach and readership of editorial advertorial and advertising. “

Unlike other monitoring services, NovusOnline has developed and owns its own software and search engine, so has total control over development, maintenance, support and customer requests.

“This enables us to reassure clients that we are 100% South African, understand both the African and SA needs of the market, and respond quickly to client requests. We are already covering the major publications and sites across the continent and welcome our clients requesting any others that we can include,” Hamman says.

NovusOnline charges by topic – so, for example, SAA, SA Airways, South African Air and so on count as one topic.

“We also don’t charge per user,” he says, “so the number of users receiving their customized daily newsletter is virtually limitless.”

Another feature Hamman is proud of is that each tracked item also includes unique visits and page views of that site.

More and more clients, either in-house or agencies, want to know what the reach is of articles and/or advertising. This information enables them to analyse the spread and reach of various websites and work out an ROI. AVE (advertising value equivalency) is automatically calculated on each article, although, comments Hamman, AVE is of less value internationally than locally.

“As all coverage is downloadable “real time” into Excel , pdfs or Word, it becomes easy for the media specialist to calculate AVE as well as readership. Feedback from our clients is that this feature is invaluable.”

NovusOnline also provides a very affordable “Share of Voice” monthly sentiment analysis report, which is fully customizable and shows negative and positive coverage.

“We have focused on providing a best-of-breed service at a highly affordable rate, especially to include small clients. And of course we can add monitoring of print, radio and TV through our experienced partners. “