SA’s Telkom looks to refocus Trudon towards smartphone advertising

South Africa’s largest telephone group Telkom plans to refocus Trudon, a business unit which owns the iconic Yellow Pages phonebook. By Gugu Lourie

Trudon delivers the best local commercial search in South Africa. It also provides affordable, effective advertising and marketing options for the local SME and corporate market. The Johannesburg-based firm have six other branches in South Africa and one branch servicing Namibia.

Telkom owns 64.9% of Trudon. The remaining 35.1% is held by the TruManco consortium.

Sipho Maseko, Telkom CEO, informed investors on Monday that Trudon will be playing in a different space.

“These guys will be playing in a different space all together. They need to really begun to leverage the platform so that they transition the advertising platform away from television and newspapers to smartphone devices,” said Maseko.

Maseko said Trudon should be a preferred mobile Ad exchange network coverage platform and expand omni-channel offerings.

It should establish e-commerce market place and expand their partnerships with the over-the-top services operators.

Telkom expects good returns from Trudon’s new focus on new advertising revenues, contextual advertising and an expanded customer base.

In June 2015, Telkom put up a “for sale” sign for Trudon.

But on Monday, Telkom informed investors that the material conditions precedent of the proposed sale of its stake in Trudon were not met.

Therefore it will no longer be classified as a discontinued operation and has been consolidated into the results from continuing operations for the year to end-March 2016.

Trudon employs 540 people.