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%).
As a result, news.com.au and nine.com.au, which had 1.056m unique visitors separating them last month, are now separated by 620,000 unique visitors.
News.com.au and nine.com.au were not the only websites to lose unique visitors, with five of the six top news websites losing a small portion of their audience.
ABC News Websites fell 2.5% to 4.495m, smh.com.au’s unique audience was 3.750m (down 1%), and The Guardian dropped 7% to a unique audience of 2.711m.
The only news website which remained stagnant was Daily Mail Australia, which reported a unique audience of 3.058m.
Despite a successful month in May, BBC fell 10% in June to a unique audience of 2.340m.
Due to international events – including a terrorist attack at Ariana Grande’s concert on May 22 – BBC climbed 16% between April and May, however the latest result saw the website slip from seventh to eight place in the digital rankings.
Yahoo7’s News websites climbed 2% to placed seventh, with a unique audience of 2.572m.
The Herald Sun’s unique audience was 2.291m (down 1%) while The Age returned to the top 10, with a unique audience of 2.211m (up 2%).
Buzzfeed Australia reported a 15% drop for the month, down from 1.788m unique viewers to 1.5m, while Mamamia slipped 4% to 1m.
The Australian declined 7%, with a unique audience of 1.5m, while the couriermail.com.au fell 9% to 1.6m.
Huffington Post, recently rebranded to HuffPo, fell 16% to a unique audience of 1.6m but The New Daily reported a 2% month on month growth, with a unique audience of 1.2m.
Mashable’s unique audience grew 3%, to 321,000 unique audience viewers.
May results: BBC climbs 16% in Australia as international events dominate in month of May, reveals Nielsen rankings
April (amended) results: Nielsen says digital news rankings for April were wrong, and Guardian didn’t beat Daily Mail after all
March results: ABC News claims second place on Nielsen Digital News rankings as Nine.com.au falls into third place
February results: Daily Telegraph grabs ninth place in Nielsen news rankings as News.com.au builds on lead position
January results: Fairfax Media’s SMH.com.au climbs back above 4m in January as News.com.au holds top spot in news rankings
Does anyone have any idea why Nine is so popular? I can understand ABC and SMH, but Nine?
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@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.
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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.
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Possibly some legacy from being homepage buddies with ninemsn? Agree it seems strange as they both split up since
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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
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@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
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@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.
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@ 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
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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
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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.
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