7News climbs 10% for second appearance in Nielsen numbers
Its second appearance in Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings has seen 7News jump 10.3%, increasing its unique audience from 5.463m in June to 6.026m in July.
The news site recently joined the ranking following its split from Yahoo after the duo’s joint venture ceased in April.
Yahoo itself also did well during the month, seeing a 5% jump from 3.262m to 3.424m, almost closing the gap on closest rival The Age, which saw a unique audience of 3.539m.
7news’ success follows former chief digital officer Clive Dickens saying prior to the launch that the site would be number one within six months.
In a tweet, Phil Goyen, executive producer of 7News’ digital offering said: the number was “an incredible result”.
Thank you to everyone who visited https://t.co/y51wipCFf1 in July. This is an incredible result – 500k up from June. We continue to grow because of you. ??
Our mission remains simple – building connection, conversation and community. pic.twitter.com/bw91tvV8yX— ᴘʜɪʟ ɢᴏʏᴇɴ (@PhilGoyen) August 12, 2019
Outside of 7News and Yahoo, things were fairly stable across the rest of the news sites. Nielsen reported a 52% growth in the time accessing sports content year-on-year, fuelled primarily by several big sporting events in 2019, including the Tour de France, Cricket World Cup, Wimbledon, game three of the State of Origin, the Women’s Football World Cup and the Netball World Cup. There was also an 80% rise year-on-year in the use of smartphones for accessing sporting content.
The type of content being accessed didn’t affect the overall hierarchy of the ranking, with news.com.au holding onto the top spot and staying above its benchmark of a 10m+ unique audience. The News Corp digital platform rose 0.2% to 10.057m.
Nielsen DCR July 2019 (Click to enlarge)
ABC News Websites fell 2.3% to 8.622m, but stayed above closest rival nine.com.au which gained 1.9% to 8.249m.
A 1.4% drop for smh.com.au saw it draw a unique audience of 7.786m, slightly closing the gap between it and 7News, which landed behind in fifth place.
After a 16% fall in June, the Guardian climbed 1.2% to 4.523m, followed by the Daily Mail which fell 0.7% to 4.287m.
Australian Community Media Network, which was previously owned by Nine before becoming privately owned in July, saw a unique audience of 3.651m, a 2.4% drop from its June figure of 3.741m.
The Age jumped 0.3% to 3.539m, holding onto ninth place above Yahoo which dropped into tenth in June following the addition of 7News to the ranking.
Among the smaller publishers, Nine’s Pedestrian Group grew 6% to 1.074m, Junkee dropped 7% to 850,234 and Vice Media Network dropped 5% to 1.033m. Urban List rose from 1.48m in June to 1.52m in July. Pedestrian’s figures don’t yet include the Allure sites.
Interesting that UA’s is still the key metric – yes important though check out the huge variations in time spent on site & sessions … getting people to a site is fairly easy – keeping them there is another
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Worth noting to that 7news has a time spent of just 5 mins compared to 20-30 mins for the other major sites…
What’s more valuable to an advertiser bragging rights or actual engagement on the site?
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Nielsen is also letting publishers pad their numbers… see final item https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/09/australian-news-corp-abc-aap-sky-weekly-beast
An iconic US newspaper like The NY Post is now a sub brand of news.com.au who knew???
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So affiliate sources should not be permitted or counted. That is an interesting POV.
What next, you show some BBC, CBS etc. footage on your webiste and it has to be excluded?
And as an aside, the publishers advise the IAB which websites, affiliates, apps, URLs etc. are part of their AU brand. Nielsen processes per the IAB list.
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It’s even more interesting when you consider the fact that theage.com.au and smh.com.au *don’t* pull their numbers when they actually could. While I am sure there would be some duplicate and it wouldn’t quite be 11.5 it would definitely move it up.
Add to that the fact Nine now owns those sites and Nine really has a stranglehold on news in Australia now. They might even dethrone news.com.au
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