Aussie news sites begin to climb out of mid-year slump
Australian news sites are starting to bounce back from a disastrous June, during which the country’s top ten news sites lost millions of cumulative readers.
According to the Ipsos iris data, released on Friday morning, eight of the top ten Australian news websites gained readers during July, with just SBS and the Daily Mail falling again. Despite the climb, only news.com.au, and 7News were able to regain the audience numbers they lost in June.
ABC News’ readership jumped 5.9%, to reach 12.7 million monthly readers, off the back of a 13.7% fall.
News.com.au was able to arrest its slide, pushing readership numbers to over 12 million for the first time since March. Nine.com.au was able to push back over the 10-million-mark again in July, after slipping to under 9.8 million readers in June.
7News enjoyed its strongest month since April, climbing 13.6% off a 7% fall to sit at 8.48 million readers, while The Guardian was unable to lure back the 2.1 million readers it lost during June, with a modest jump of 45,000 readers.
As mentioned above, The Daily Mail and SBS continued to shed readers, with the former losing over 600,000 readers, following a 250,000 drop in June. The SBS had a modest 1.9% drop, off a larger 7.3% June fall. Yahoo gained 245,000 readers, after losing 685,000.
It was mixed fortunes for Nine’s mastheads: The Age jumped back into the top ten most-read sites for the first time since April, with a mighty 17.3% leap, while the Sydney Morning Herald was only able to draw back 350,000 readers, after losing over 1.2 million in June.
Interestingly, real estate hub Domain saw a 10.8% jump in web traffic in July, as its sale to US listings giant Costar was finalised.
Market leader, News Corp’s realestate.com.au also saw a traffic jump — of 3.3% or close to 400,000 users. Its pricing model is currently being probed by the ACCC.
Despite Domain’s July activity, it still receives just over half the traffic of realestate.com.au, with 6.37 million views compared to 12.3 million. In addition, News Corp’s realcommercial.com.au hub also pulls an extra 2.3 million views each month, making it clear who the market leader is.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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