Gap closes between Nine and News websites, Nielsen rankings find
News.com.au’s unique audience share has slipped 8%, leaving 620,000 unique visitors between the website and its closest competitor, nine.com.au.
While it still holds the top spot in the Nielsen digital news rankings, news.com.au reported a unique audience of 5.302m for June, down from last month’s audience of 5.783m.
Nine.com.au, which remains in second, reported a unique audience of 4.682m (down 1%).
Does anyone have any idea why Nine is so popular? I can understand ABC and SMH, but Nine?
Possibly some legacy from being homepage buddies with ninemsn? Agree it seems strange as they both split up since
@The Facts
It’s giving the people what they want. You may not like it and it might not be to your taste but it hits middle Australia’s sweet spot.
Nine.com.au bundle all of their verticals (sports, lifestyle, entertainment, ect) under the nine.com.au domain so all visits add to their “News” audience. News, SMH and Yahoo7 have setup their sites with Neilsen correctly by vertical so only genuine News audiences are counted towards their News audience.
Hi,
Just to correct the record Nine.com.au’s rank in the Nielsen monthly news rankings includes our homepage, 9News, Wide Sport of Sports and also other Nine lifestyle sites.
However, this is no different to how news.com.au, smh.com.au or theage.com.au are measured and categorised. Their overall news number also includes their news, sports and lifestyle sites which is classified as ‘News’ and sits in the Current Events and Global News category.
Regards
Nic Christensen – Nine’s Head of Trade and Internal Communications
@gaming the system is absolutely right. Nielson have never been able to adequately explain why they allow Nine to aggregate the audience to all/most of it’s websites into a single figure, while other publishers are measured on a site-by-site basis. This is not apples with apples. A more valid comparison would be to also show total audience to all fairfax sites, total audience to all NewsCorp news sites etc etc
@gaming the system nails it, this gaming of the system is the elephant in the room.
In an era where all significant growth is off-platform why are we still placing a primacy on owned inventory? Relying on Nielsen means networks are stuck pursuing a short sighted strategy of having to game the system ala. Nine’s counting of ‘lifestyle’ under news combined with the debasing of quality journalism for quick wins.
@ Nic Christensen – your explanation is either disingenuous or ignorant. News.com.au, smh, the age numbers include their lifestyle, sport, news SECTIONS on each site. But in each case, these sections are all part of the one site (smh.com.au, or news.com.au etc). By your own explanation, Nine numbers aggregate traffic from multiple different SITES . Nine’s numbers reflect traffic to the whole Nine Network of sites. Smh, Age, news.com.au numbers reflect traffic to each site, not the entire Fairfax or News Corp network of sites. It is not apples with apples
While we’re at it being skeptical, I would love someone to explain a Nielsen ‘custom rollup’, who decides how it goes together and how a buyer can get transparency around how they are built for each publishing group
No media planners actually care about these numbers. They are more interested in daily reach, time spent, repeat visits… I wish Mumbrella would focus on engagement metrics instead.