ABC News makes big gains in news-heavy year
ABC News has added close to 1.4 million online readers over the past twelve months while fierce competitor news.com.au has largely stalled, according to data released today.
The Ipsos Iris readership data shows that ABC News remained the country’s most-read news site for February, with around 200,000 more monthly readers than news.com.au.
A year ago, the News Corp website was dominating rivals, with its readership of 12.4 million being some 1.4 million clear of the ABC’s news site. Looking back even further, news.com.au was the most-read site in Australia throughout the entirety of 2023.
News.com.au’s numbers dropped dramatically in January, with the site dipping by 400,000 readers from December 2024. ABC News gained 731,000 readers over that same month.
There has, however, been some forward movement for news.com.au in February. The site’s readership climbed 3.9% from January to February — albeit recovering from the aforementioned 3.4% dip — compared to a 0.6% drop for the ABC over the same period.
February 2025 readership data
February 2024 readership data
Despite news.com.au’s slip to #2, it is still 1.95 million monthly readers ahead of the third most-read news site, nine.com.au.
Nine’s main news portal has added 495,000 readers over the past twelve months, with 277,000 of those coming in the past month alone. Using a January year-on-year comparison, however, Nine’s growth has actually been quite static, with a modest increase of 174,000 readers over that twelve-month period.
Nine.com.au’s monthly readership sits at 10.5 million for February 2025, well clear of Nine’s two biggest mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald (6.9m) and The Age (4.4m).
Without duplicated readers included in the numbers (those who read both mastheads), The Sydney Morning and The Age have a combined, unique monthly readership of 8.25 million.
The entire Nine news stable, including nine.com.au, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Australian Financial Review, Brisbane Times, and WA Today, has a unique monthly audience of 13.278 million. Removing nine.com.au from this list, Nine’s mastheads have a de-duplicated audience of 9.271 million across the country.
Elsewhere, if we apply the year-on-year readership comparison (for February), both the aforementioned Nine publications have fallen — SMH by 931,000 readers, and The Age by 538,000 — as have The Daily Mail (down by 812,000), and 7 News (down 346,000).
Enjoying year-on-year growth are The Guardian (up by 851,000), Yahoo News (up 763,000), and SBS News – up 434,000.
With an election season swinging into gear — not to mention US trade turmoil, and two current international wars — we will watch the movements between now and May with interest.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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7news has really tanked in the last year or so. Tv and online audiences well down.
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Some of these numbers look odd. If Age has 4.4m and SMH 6.9m (=11.3) but removing duplications gives 8.25m readers, that would mean 3m people read both Age and SMH. I find that hard to believe, even assuming many journos and libraries have both subscriptions.
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