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Pulse, Africa’s leading innovative media company, has won the Best in Audience Engagement category at the 2025 WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Africa for its leading audience-first content strategy, the User Needs Impact Project 360.
The project was awarded for transforming Pulse’s approach to delivering more relevant, helpful, and engaging stories that truly serve the needs of young audiences across Africa.
Organised by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the Digital Media Awards Africa spotlight the most innovative and impactful digital initiatives from newsrooms across the continent. The awards celebrate projects that push the boundaries of storytelling, deepen audience engagement, and advance the future of digital journalism.
After observing signs of content fatigue and declining engagement, Pulse Africa launched the User Needs Impact Project 360 — a bold, data-informed strategy rooted in the User Needs Model developed by Dmitry Shishkin, Ringier Media International CEO, overseeing all Ringier media brands in the CEE countries.
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By centering content around what the audience truly values and using intelligent tools to track performance across key metrics, Pulse achieved a significant boost in engagement across its digital platforms.
In the words of the WAN-IFRA judging panel:
“The User Needs Impact Project 360 is a highly innovative approach to content creation, focusing on audience needs.”
The project has already delivered measurable results:
A 66.49% increase in traffic to the lifestyle section
A 151.3% increase in engagement across social media platforms
Strong performance from tailored “Educate Me” and “Help Me” content formats
A newsroom-wide shift toward producing fewer but more valuable stories
Kanyinsola Aroyewun, Director of Marketing and Content Growth at Pulse Africa:
“This award is a powerful validation of the work our teams across markets are doing to reimagine how we tell stories that matter. With the User Needs framework, we’ve moved beyond chasing trends to truly serving our audience. It’s about making every piece of content purposeful, relevant, and responsive to what people need from media today. I’m incredibly proud of the entire Pulse content team for their creativity, focus and dedication to this vision.”
The strategy has been fully integrated across Pulse’s operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. It brings together editorial, social and video teams in a collaborative, insight-driven workflow that puts audience value at the core of content decisions.
Pulse User Needs Impact Project 360 was featured on Journalism.co.uk as a case study in audience-first content innovation. The project continues to evolve through real-time data, audience insight, and ongoing team development.
In addition to this win, Business Insider Africa and Pulse Sports were named finalists in their respective categories. Business Insider Africa was recognised in the Best Use of Video category for its smart video strategy on TikTok, while Pulse Sports was a finalist for Best Relaunch of Digital Platforms for its fan engagement YouTube series, CrossFire. These recognitions further reinforce Pulse Africa’s commitment to innovation and excellence across all its brands.
For more information:
WAN-IFRA Finalists List
WAN-IFRA Winners List
Read on Pulse Africa website
Read on Pulse Africa LinkedIn
Read on Pulse Africa Instagram
View Award certificate from WAN-IFRA