Ipsos Iris has released its data for October 2025, showing that Aussies are looking to travel websites and apps en masse ahead of the summer holidays. The career, homes and automotive categories also saw their biggest audience increases in October since last year.
During October, 19 million people turned to travel websites, or 85 per cent of Australians aged 14+. The overall travel category grew by 4.5 per cent year on year, driven by Uber, Booking.com, Qantas, TripAdvisor, and Virgin Australia as the most popular companies.
The surge was largely driven by the automotive transportation category, which grew by +14.7 per cent in October, followed by online travel at +11.6 per cent, airlines with +9.2 per cent, and travel news which was up +7.8 per cent.
Women tended to spend more time with online travel content, at 57 minutes, compared to 51 minutes spent by men. Women were more likely to visit hotels, resorts and home sharing websites and apps compared to men. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to visit the rail and train category than women.
The travel category includes all types of online activity related to travel from rideshare, taxis, and public transport, to hotels and home sharing, airlines, cruises and overseas travel.
Website and apps categories with the highest year-on-year growth in October were topped by career (up +11.8 per cent), homes and property (+10.2 per cent) and automotive (+8.7 per cent), followed by lifestyle (+6.9 per cent) and energy suppliers/utilities (+5.8 per cent).
Overall, Ipsos iris showed that a total of 22.127 million Australians aged 14+ used the internet in October and spent 4.68 hours per day on average online, which was up 2.9 per cent compared to the same time last year.
Over 40s spent the most time consuming online travel content at 59 minutes per month. The most popular categories for the over 40s were the online travel category with 7.3 million people consuming website and app content, followed by airlines with 6.8 million people.
The over 40s audience reach in the travel category is 2.5 times larger than those aged under 40, at 29.5 per cent versus 11.9 per cent.
News gets a small boost
Online news content consumption rose by +2.4 per cent year on year in October to 21.1 million, with the publications leading the charge ABC News, news.com.au, nine.com.au, 7news.com.au, and The Guardian Australia.
News content reached 95.5 per cent of online Australians aged 14+. Aussies aged 14+ spent an average of 3.27 hours consuming news content online, which is on par with the corresponding period last year.
Australians turned to news websites and apps for local and international news events. In Australia, online consumption was driven by the search for four-year-old missing boy Gus Lamont in outback South Australia, as well as continued coverage of the separation of celebrity couple Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, the random stabbing of a woman in Melbourne’s CBD, plus Nine Network’s The Block finale and sports events including the NRL Grand Final between the Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm, AFL and NRL player trades, and the NRL Dally M Awards red carpet fashion.
Global news that caught Aussies’ attention included the death of actor Diane Keaton, Hurricane Melissa making landfall in Jamaica, the ongoing scandals surrounding royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the release of hostages following the Gaza ceasefire.
News Australia’s brands reached four in five online Australians, with 18.22 million people visiting News’ sites in October, posting an engaged reach of 157 browser page views per person, up 8.27 per cent from last month.
“News Corp Australia’s network of news and lifestyle sites effectively engage audiences, leading to better results for our clients. Our number one lifestyle site, taste.com.au, delivers a deeply engaged Australian food audience at scale. This month, it tops the Lifestyle category with the highest audience and engaged reach as Australians turn to the site to help them start planning for the festive season,” managing director and publisher of free news and lifestyle Pippa Leary said.
In the lifestyle category at the brand level, News Australia saw Taste.com.au top the category, claiming 79.8 per cent of the entire video audience in the food and beverage category.
In the news category at the brand level, News.com.au delivered an audience of 12.24 million and 347 million browser PVs. The site had an average time spent of 30 minutes per person, and 63.2 per cent of all video views in the news category.
Ipsos iris is endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and provides data about the 22 million Australians aged 14+ who access a wide variety of digital content and services across Smartphone, PC/Laptop and Tablet devices.
