24.com and The SpaceStation tee-up for the future

With an ever-changing digital landscape continuing to evolve at a rapid pace in South Africa, 24.com has made some strategic changes to its organisational structure – integrating its sales division, The SpaceStation, with its publishing business unit, and establishing a new commercial unit focusing on data-driven sales technology. Andreij Horn, CEO of 24.com, says two tangible benefits result from these changes:

“We ensure clarity of focus and faster turn-around times for clients by integrating the full value chain of our market-leading publishing division into one business unit, and we establish a data-driven commercial unit that will take our current abilities to segment audiences and deliver targeted advertising campaigns to the next level”.

Gustav Goosen, who has been Head of The SpaceStation since 2013, has been appointed as Head: Conversion Science in a newly created division called 24.com AI. This new team brings together a team of highly skilled data scientists and engineers, specialized in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) with the specific mandate to extend the data-driven engineering competencies 24.com has developed to improve reader engagement, to commercial conversion. “With his nearly 20 years’ experience in digital advertising, Gustav is the ideal person to lead the team developing our next-generation advertising platform and the new opportunities we want to offer our advertising clients,” says Horn.

The SpaceStation will now report into the publishing division under the leadership of Charlene Beukes, and with nearly three decades in the Media24 group, Charlene is perfectly poised to take over the leadership of the sales and support teams at The SpaceStation. This alignment brings the sales, business management, operations and publishing teams much closer together to deliver an enhanced and streamlined service to clients and agencies.

Says Charlene Beukes, “with the largest online audience in South Africa, 24.com’s publishing prowess demands that we continue to innovate and stay ahead of the digital curve. I’m very excited about the alignment and responsibility of managing the award-winning team at The SpaceStation”.

The Sales divisions at The SpaceStation have also realigned to create regional structures. Craig Nicholson and Gavin Ruiters will each take responsibility as Sales Directors for their North and South regions respectively