Ninemsn leapfrogs stablemate the Daily Mail as online news audiences surge
Ninemsn’s suite of news websites have leapfrogged the Daily Mail to become the fourth most popular news site, according to the Nielsen online rankings which show an overall life in audiences for news sites.
The March numbers show Ninemsn surged up the rankings with more than 300,000 new unique viewers during the month, taking its audience to 2.543m, while the Daily Mail’s audience increased by 45,000 to 2.509m uniques.
News.com.au retains the top spot with 3.850m, though Fairfax Media’s smh.com.au continues to close the gap which is down from 162,000 to just 76,000 unique users difference at 3.774m.
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ABC News websites came in third place, despite recording a growth of 467,000 new unique users, as all of the top five websites saw a boost on last month’s numbers.
The BBC scraped into tenth place with a unique audience of 1.912m overhauling News Corp’s Melbourne tabloid The Herald Sun which sits behind a paywall.
Yahoo!7 news websites saw a slight rise in audience to 2.201m, but remained steady in sixth place, followed closely by The Guardian at 2.157m.
The Age and The Daily Telegraph both managed to break the two million mark, with 2.068m and 2.019m respectively.
Viral content site Buzzfeed’s numbers grew from February’s 1.555m to 1.783m, while SBS managed 1.684m.
Huffington Post recorded 1.194m as it gears up for its Australian launch which is slated for this quarter, ahead of The Australian’s 1.101m.
Journalism meets academia site The Conversation saw a rise of 153,000 unique viewers to break the half-million mark, at 531,000.
In the meantime, real estate sites experienced a record-breaking month in March with both realestate.com.au and Domain setting all-time audience highs.
Realestate.com.au reached a unique audience of over 4.003m and Domain saw a 38 percent increase to 2.460m.
“Real estate site audiences have well and truly exploded in the past 12 months, and March has seen both Realestate.com.au and Domain reach an all-time high,” said head of media at Nielsen Monique Perry.
“This reflects Australia’s real estate obsession, as well as the ongoing leadership these sites demonstrate in delivering on customer experience.”
Sam Buckingham-Jones
