Nielsen charts show surge in catch up TV viewing as news rankings remain stable
The latest Nielsen numbers show a big rise in catch-up TV viewing in February after the TV stations launched their major programming for the start of 2014.
According to Nielsen, February saw a notable uplift in traffic to free to air catch up TV websites with NineMSN’s Jump In rising 61 per cent, while rivals Yahoo!7 saw a 35 per cent increase,and Ten’s Ten Play saw an uplift of 28 percent and ABC TV websites were up 18 per cent, passing the one million unique audience mark.
In the news rankings there was no change in the top seven news sites rankings with News Corp’s News.com.au retaining its top place for a second month in a row with an audience of 2.927m, and nearly all sites in the top 10 experiencing growth in audiences.
Meanwhile the Mail Online which has yet to fully launch its Australian operation, fell back to tenth place with 1.382m, while The Guardian remained just outside the top 10 with an audience of 1.297m. The Australian also recovered from a January decline rising 23 per cent to 1.063m.
Monique Perry, head of the media industry group at Nielsen, said: “There were notable high‐profile news stories during February and there are strong connections to referrals from social media, sites such as Facebook, which our research shows drives incremental traffic to sites.
“It is expected that certain categories will slow down at this time of year, such as retail, travel and airline sites, as consumers return from holidays and the January retail sale bonanza.
“Similarly, increases in traffic to sites that are business, news or finance related, such as these news sites or the likes of ASX, are naturally predicted to record month‐on‐month increases at this time of year.”
Nic Christensen
