The portal has been witnessing a steady growth in traffic; to offer news in 12 regional languages
News18.com, a rising leader in the general news category which attracted 63 million unique visitors and 337 million page views in December 2017 as per Google Analytics. Not only News18.com has seen a steady rise in traffic, the portal has rolled out several successful IPs within one year of its commencement. Some of them include GIRS – Global Indian Realty Summit, Tech and Auto Awards 2017 and they’re coming up with an IP in the new age movie space. News18 is now expanding its regional footprint for the digital-first regional audience by offering news in 12 different languages – including Kannada, Odiya, Punjabi, Assamese and more. As a result, News18.com will emerge as a digital news hub offering content in the most number of Indian languages by covering the length and breadth of the country.
Manish Maheshwari, CEO Network18 Digital said, “The kind of traction that we have received on News18.com’s existing regional properties has been very encouraging. Moreover, we expect the next phase of digital growth to come from the regional pie because of the rising demand of news and information from the internet-savvy regional consumers. In order to proactively meet this demand in the coming months, we have decided to further regionalise our content by offering news in as many as 12 different languages, the most by any digital news portal.”
Traffic has been rising steadily on News18.com, and a tremendous spurt was observed during the Gujarat and Himachal elections, when the website saw real time users cross 200K, total users cross 8 million, and page views cross 40 million.
Rajiv Singh, Business Head, News18.com said, “The content that was being put out on the website on result day was extremely well researched, providing both the micro and macro picture of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections. Our real-time users were 7 times the daily users, the total users for the day was 4 times the daily users, the total page views for the day was 8 times the daily users, the average session duration on desktop and mobile combined was 1.5 times the daily figure, and pages/session was 2 times on desktop and 1.5 times on mobile compared to daily recordings. We now look forward to carrying this momentum into the New Year, as we offer news in 12 different regional languages.”
News18.com, a part of Network18 Media and Entertainment, Group has been at the forefront in providing varied, quality content to its readers spanning across genres like politics, entertainment, sports amongst others.
Anushrav Gulati, Business Head Languages & Programmatic (News), Network18 Digital further adds “In next 5 years, 9 out of 10 internet users in India will be Indic language users. Our own data indicates that Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Marathi audience is adopting internet at a faster clip. It is our strong conviction to be a voice of trust for our audience across length and breadth of India on multiple platforms. We have therefore embarked on an ambitious plan to strengthen our digital offerings in 12 indic languages, in addition to our Strong Television portfolio including News18 India and ETV channels. We are now available in Hindi, Kannada, Urdu, Gujarati, Bangla and Marathi. Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi and a few more languages will be available on News18.com in coming few weeks.”