News.com.au has launched a major overhaul of its mobile app, introducing a new “Swipe or Scroll” experience designed to bring the news publisher closer to the way younger audiences consume content on social media.
The revamped app combines traditional scrolling with visual story cards that users can swipe through, allowing audiences to choose how they navigate the news.
Other social-media style features include featured comments, emoji reactions and “shake-to-reveal” interactions.
Speaking to B&T, Pippa Leary, managing director and publisher of News Corp Australia’s Free News & Lifestyle division, said the redesign of the app was part of a broader strategy to prioritise engagement over audience reach.
“For a couple of years now, our strategy has been to focus really heavily on engagement rather than just reach,” Leary said.
According to Leary, the difference in engagement between the publisher’s mobile web and app audiences was a key driver behind the investment.
“When someone comes to us on the mobile web, they might look at 20 pages a month. When they come to us on the app, they look at over 200 pages a month,” she said. “That’s 10x the engagement.”
Despite that engagement, the news.com.au app had not received a significant overhaul since 2019.
Leary said the publisher had previously been reluctant to invest heavily in the app because it could not deliver the same advertising targeting capabilities as its mobile web offering.
“We couldn’t do any kind of data targeting, because the app environments for both Apple and Android differ from the web,” she said.
News.com.au subsequently developed a way to use its own first-party data to deliver the same targeting experience within the app as on its website.
Leary said the move resulted in a 15-fold increase in daily revenue from the app, giving the publisher the confidence to make the user experience its next priority.
“But the problem was the UX and the UI was still from 2019. It was still very, very old,” she said.
The new app is designed to address that gap, with Leary describing the “Swipe or Scroll” functionality as a way to modernise the experience without alienating news.com.au’s established audience.
“Old school people love to scroll,” she said. “But for younger audiences who have become very accustomed to swiping from social media, we’ve created the ability to tell our stories on what we call visual story cards.”
Rather than forcing users into one navigation style, the app lets them choose between the two.
“For our rusted-on users, they really love scrolling. And so we’re going to leave that in place,” Leary said. “Now what we’re wanting to do is build something that’s really appealing to younger generations as well.”
The visual story cards present an image, headline and description, with additional cards layered underneath so users can rapidly swipe through the latest stories.
Leary said the format would allow news.com.au to deliver stories “at high velocity visually”, while making the experience more intuitive for audiences accustomed to social platforms.
The publisher is also putting greater emphasis on audience participation, with a new “Most Commented” module designed to highlight the stories generating the most discussion.
A “Featured Comments” function will allow editors to surface selected reader responses within articles, while emoji reactions are also planned for a future update.
Leary said the reaction functionality would give news.com.au an immediate read on how audiences are responding to individual stories.
“We know a lot of people really feel like they want to say something about the story, but they can’t be bothered going and doing a comment,” she said.
“So we’ll give them the ability just to do an immediate reaction.”
The new app also forms part of News.com.au’s wider strategy to build a more direct relationship with its audience.
Leary said app users are particularly valuable because the publisher is less reliant on search and social platforms to reach them.
“With the app, you have a relationship because someone has downloaded the app,” she said.
“What that means is when search and social algorithm changes, that doesn’t affect us anymore.”
The app also allows News.com.au to send breaking news alerts directly to users, shifting the publisher from what Leary described as a “pull company” to a “push company”.
On the commercial side, the relaunch introduces an expanded suite of mobile advertising products, including ScrollX Duo, which combines app and mobile web inventory in a single buy.
Leary said the product would allow advertisers to combine the scale of mobile web with the higher engagement of the app.
“We’re selling them the breadth of mobile web with the depth of engagement in the app,” she said.
News.com.au has also worked with Bonzai to introduce interactive advertising formats, allowing advertisers to incorporate surveys, quizzes and “shake-to-reveal” interactions.
The publisher has also upgraded its Glass Leaderboard format, using Apple’s newer visual design technology to create advertising that blends more seamlessly into the surrounding app environment.
Leary said the publisher was also exploring advertising formats built specifically around the new visual story cards.
“If it turns out that the swipe cards and the visual cards are really popular, then we will be creating an MREC version of a visual card,” she said.
The proposed format could see an ad appear between every three or four visual stories, although Leary said the publisher would wait to assess audience behaviour before introducing it.
“We don’t want to do anything that’s too disruptive,” she said. “We want to make sure it’s a nice, smooth experience.”
The app relaunch is being supported by a national integrated marketing campaign under the platform “Get the app that gets you”.
Developed entirely in-house, the campaign has been shot from the perspective of a phone and focuses on everyday moments in which Australians turn to their devices for news and entertainment.
The campaign will run across digital, social, audio, radio, television and out-of-home, including bus shelters, street furniture and a large-scale 3D billboard in Melbourne.
Leary said the decision to lean heavily into outdoor reflected the way audiences use the app while on the move.
“They want a quick burst of the news,” she said. “They want to know what’s going on, they want to see lighter stuff, and they want to see entertainment news. They just want it quickly while they’re out.”
News.com.au said its app audience is now 10 times more engaged than web users, based on Adobe Analytics data comparing January to April 2026 with the same period in 2025.
The publisher recorded an audience of 11.08 million and 292 million browser page views in the June 2026 Ipsos iris rankings.
For Leary, however, the relaunch represents the beginning rather than the end of the app strategy.
“This thing hadn’t been touched since 2019. It was pretty old school,” she said. “Now it will just be constant iteration, constant improvement. All of our focus will be around the app.”
