Taylor-mania helps news.com.au top February rankings
According to the freshly released February 2024 rankings from Ipsos iris, while news.com.au took out the top spot as “Australia’s number one digital news brand”, Aussies were plugged in across a range of sources, categories, and topics.
News.com.au brought in an impressive number of stats during February this year, effectively reaching “an audience of 12.423 million”, while supporting a 1.372 million gap between it and ABC News.
The site reached one in two Australians with viewers spending an average of 28 minutes on it.
Video-based news was also a major hit for the brand, racking up 18 million views over the month and drawing in a total of 1.114 million viewers.
Ipsos iris’ data also revealed that news.com.au dominated several news categories: Entertainment (5.866 million), finance (4.855 million), lifestyle (5.152 million), sport (3.229 million), technology (2.107 million), and, unsurprisingly given the website’s past numbers with the subject, travel (2.654 million).
According to Kerry Warren, news.com.au’s editor, Taylor Swift’s highly publicised Australian tour garnered “the site’s second biggest entertainment number since Ipsos iris launched in January last year.”
“We went all-in on Taylor Swift mania, running coverage of every concert, launching a dedicated vertical video carousel and even changing our logo to a news.com.au friendship bracelet,” Warrne explained.
Other topics that captured the attention of news.com.au’s audience include the cases surrounding Ballarat mum Samantha Murphy and ex-reporter Jesse Baird/flight attendant Luke Davies. The British royal family were also a part of the platform’s conversation, specifically Kate Middleton’s abdominal surgery and the hospitalisation of King Charles.
But while news.com.au may have topped the list last month, Ipsos iris’ data revealed that Australians – over 20.6 million – were hungry for news across a range of sources.
The above mentioned ABC News brought in an audience of 11,051 million, followed by nine.com.au (9,967 million), Daily Mail Australia (9.489 million), and 7news.com.au (8,262 million) – the top five news sources for February.
Australians were interested in various hot topics over the month, including the redesign of stage three tax cuts, the Gaza and Ukraine wars, ex-Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s last day in the political sphere, the Grammys, and more.
Regarding app and website categories, the numbers are also significant. February saw an audience of 21.3 million use search engines, social networking and technology (separately), while retail and commerce brought in 21 million. Entertainment managed to squeeze in 20.9 million.
Meanwhile, over 13.8 million people (14-years-old and up) spent time on “a career website or app”, with the amount of time actually increasing “+14.9%” per person. With that being said, 25 to 39-year-olds are the ones clocking in the longest times on these platforms – 1.3 hours each month.
Cost of living and live entertainment both made an impact on the report’s statistics. As a category, energy utilities and suppliers grew quickly with a 5.2% increase compared to January. Attractions and events also experienced a boon with a jump of 2.4%. Unsurprinsingly, music events rocketed with 68% thanks to Taylor Swift.
Education wasn’t ignored last month, with “the average time spent online in the … category” increasing by 15.5%.
Generally speaking, each day, 21.499 million people (14-years-old and higher) spent an average of 4.4 hours on the internet (112 hours for the whole month).
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Matthew is the editorial assistant at Mumbrella. He joined the company at the end of September 2023.
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topics
7news.com.au
Daily Mail Australia
Ipsos Iris
Kerry Warren
news.com.au
Nine.com.au
Taylor Swift
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