OMG Digital (YC S16) Is BuzzFeed for Africa

  $1.3 trillion that the continent is projected to spend
  in 2020.

Please don't use statistics like this. The combined consumer spending of a continent (54 separate countries, I think) is not really a fair portrayal of the opportunity. The linked source notes that $200bn is projected to be discretionary, which is closer to being relevant (as discretionary spending is largely the target of advertisers.)

The real question, which that metric may have been trying to address, is the purchasing power of the average consumer.

  From 1993 to 2008 the average per capita income of sub-Saharan
  African economies barely budged—it increased from $742 to $762
  per year (measured in 2005 purchasing-power parity-adjusted dollars).
  If we exclude South Africa and the Seychelles, we see a decline from
  $608 to $556 over the period.[0]

For individual spending that small, you (an company making money from ads) either need:

a) Companies who have incredible operations to sell at scale across the continent, given the low average customer value (e.g. Coca-Cola)

b) Many companies, each tackling local markets, that you (or an underlying ad network) can reach effectively at scale

Are there examples of large corporate ad buys from (a) or an underlying network for (b) in Africa?

[0] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/01/incomes-...

It's good to see a media startup getting some attention. Not every tech company has to be some cutting-edge, shiny research project to be successful. (In fact, most of them aren't.) There's nothing wrong building a business by taking existing, time-tested technology and bringing it to a new, growing market.

If they actually manage to combine Nigeria/Ghana and Kenya into one site I'm going to be really impressed.

Primarily, because I know from personal experience that a lot of people on the east side of Africa, do not actually care about random news on the west side of Africa (reasonable considering the two sides are approximately 3000 miles away from each other and have utterly dissimilar histories).

Interesting that it's described as currently catering to Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria because the content is solely Ghana specific. These 3 countries also have very different social perspectives and very different flavours of entertainment and lifestyle. A number of popular sites also exist in this niche targeted at each country. Likewise, the remaining 51 countries also have significantly different cultures whose entertainment needs probably can't be comprehensively addressed by a single site.

Edit: There's a different page for each country; I missed seeing the button to select accordingly the first time through.

I'm kind of surprised the name "OMG Digital" didn't raise any flags with legal given OMG is what Omnicom Media Group is often referred to, and is the media services division of Omnicom or OMD (one of the largest ad agency holding companies).

Couldn't find any relationship between the two from a cursory look, but I'd be shocked if they didn't have OMG trademarked in some form.

Is this one of the first media startups funded by YC?

Maybe listicles like 10 ways Western oil companies committed atrocities in the Niger Delta?

I don't exactly agree with BuzzFeed's business practices because it uses a lot of clickbait tactics. For that reason this comparison carries a sort of negative connotation, although I understand it.