Nielsen Online Ratings: SMH Retains Top Spot

Close-up of female hands touching buttons of black computer keyboard

The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) has retained the top spot in online news rankings for October compared to the previous month while News.com.au recorded the largest uplift in time spent during the same period, according to results released by Nielsen.

While overall ‘current events and global news’ remained stable at 9.9 million unique users during the month of October, the top two mastheads (SMH and News.com.au) increased their audiences by 6% and 5% respectively, compared to the prior month.

News.com.au saw ongoing success with consumer engagement, increasing time spent on their site by an additional 17% to one hour, 46 minutes making this the highest month for time spent consuming news content on record for any individual site.

Nielsen Online Ratings unique audience data confirmed SMH retained top spot in the online news category. BBC and The Herald Sun had the strongest growth in unique audience of the top ten mastheads for the month, with 12% and 11% (respectively) more people on their site in October compared to the prior month.

The Guardian moved up the ranks to sixth place, with an 8% increase in unique audience. This is the highest ranking for the masthead since their launch in the Australia market in May last year.

Nine News recorded an expected decline in unique audience of 20% as a result of the MSN separation. Consequently, MSN News moved up the ranks to 17th with a unique audience of 868,000.

Head of Nielsen’s media industry group, Monique Perry said the online news category has been heating up in the closing quarter of the year. She said: “While the overall category is flat, audiences to sites have grown leading us to believe consumers are gulping down more content, from more sites, for more time every month. We are seeing some solid competition in the hotly contested online news category.”

Nielsen confirmed more than five million Australians streamed current events and global news video content in October 2014. News.com.au has taken the top spot in the News Category for the highly sought after video streaming rankings followed by SMH and Channel Nine News. ABC has the highest time spent streaming events and global news video content.

NameUnique Audience (000)Page Views Per PersonSessions Per PersonTime Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
smh.com.au3,8243511.2701:01:54
news.com.au3,7345613.2801:45:44
ABC News Websites2,697259.3300:40:31
ninemsn News Websites2,4642711.7200:43:45
Daily Mail Australia2,443186.2900:52:27
The Guardian2,085145.6900:35:26
Yahoo!7 News Websites2,024218.3800:26:08
The Age1,9834312.9501:26:26
Herald Sun1,895177.5300:39:52
BBC1,668215.9400:40:23

Source: Nielsen Online Ratings, Hybrid data October, 2014.




Latest News

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm
  • Media

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm

Sydney Comedy Festival 2024 is live and ready to rumble, showing the best of international and homegrown talent at a host of venues around town. As usual, it’s hot on the heels of its big sister, the giant that is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, picking up some acts as they continue on their own […]

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth
  • Advertising

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) has announced the final epic lineup of local and global marketing powerhouses for RESET for Growth 2024. Lead image: Josh Faulks, chief executive officer, AANA  Back in 2000, a woman with no business experience opened her first juice bar in Adelaide. The idea was brilliantly simple: make healthy […]