The latest Nielsen Digital Ratings show Australia’s current events and news websites are steaming ahead in the digital world, with a shake up of your usual trailblazers.
The ABC News websites have surged into top spot for unique audience, overtaking previous leaders of news.com.au and smh. Meanwhile, nine.com.au has made its first appearance in the top five, following its recent rebrand.
The ABC’s news sites have seen an increase in unique audience of 30 per cent to 6.5 million, compared to the previous month.
The newly rebranded nine.com.au leads the way in time spent on-site, garnering an average of 58 minutes and 41 seconds time spent per person, pipping news.com.au by just over a minute.
Alex Parsons, chief digital and marketing officer of Nine Entertainment, said, “Today’s result is an early reflection of the rollout of both our rich and dynamic content and also our strong commercial strategy.”
News.com.au still managed an increase of 14 per cent in unique audience to 6.2 million ahead of smh.com.au who retained third place with a unique audience increase on the previous month of six per cent.
Nine.com.au came in at fourth place, followed by Daily Mail, The Guardian and Yahoo7 News.
ABC News Websites and news.com.au both reported large increases in smartphone engagement with unique audience growth of 77 per cent and 25 per cent respectively for these devices.
The Age jumped back into Nielsen’s top 10 rankings with a 12 per cent increase in unique audience compared to the previous month and, notably, smartphone engagement increasing by 37 per cent for this site. BBC came in at ninth followed by the Herald Sun.