Nielsen March figures show The Guardian Australia edge towards three million, others fall
The Guardian Australia saw a massive leap in audience for the month of March, climbing 8.5% to a unique audience of 2.810m, new digital ratings monthly numbers show.
According to Nielsen’s March figures, The Guardian managed a larger audience than the Daily Mail Australia this month, which fell by 12% to an audience of 2.471m.
The Guardian Australia’s audience is now within 400,000 of its nearest competitor, Yahoo7 News.
Seven West Media and Oath’s Yahoo7 grew its audience ahead of the announcement Seven would sell its 50% stake and end the joint venture.
According to Nielsen’s March figures, Yahoo7 News was up month on month from 3.072m to an audience of 3.154m.
Although its audience remained less than news.com.au, nine.com.au, ABC News and smh.com.au, it was one of five publishers to grow month on month.
News.com.au continued its lead over other publishers with a unique audience of 5.887m, up from February’s audience of 5.749m. However Nine took a massive leap in audience growth for the month of March, swelling from a February unique audience of 4.557m to 4.868m – up 6%.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s unique audience sat at 3.541m, down from last month’s 3.910m, a fall of 10%. The result is the second since the publisher pulled from Nielsen’s digital content ratings, due to disagreements with methodology.
Mumbrella understands other publishers involved in DRM share Fairfax’s concerns about the way it is being measured, and do not believe total audience is being accurately reflected in monthly ratings. And while Digital Content Ratings isn’t quite there yet, it is a better reflection of audience.
As a result of Fairfax Media’s exit from Nielsen, the publisher removed tags from its pages, meaning not all activity is tracked and reported in the DCR. This affects the sites’ DRM numbers as tagging is used in combination with panel based data to measure sessions per person and time spent on site – otherwise known as volumetrics.
Last month Nielsen posted a notice at the top of its results: “Fairfax Metropolitan sites, including metropolitan mastheads does not include any census data for their volumetrics including time per person and sessions per person. Unique audience uses the same methodology as previous months and is consistent with all sites in the rankings.”
Meanwhile, MSN News reported a unique audience of 2.418m up 11% month on month, BBC’s audience was 2.359m and The Herald Sun’s unique audience for March was 2.211m. The Age did not make the top 10 in March.
Nielsen would not provide Mumbrella with the news rankings outside of the top 10.
February Results: SMH and The Age take digital ratings hit following Nielsen withdrawal
January Results: News, ABC and Nine see digital news growth in January following December slump
