The Olympics dominates news and sport coverage in July
The 2024 Paris Olympics dominated our screens throughout July, leading to a surge in visits to news websites and apps for live updates.
In July, at the peak of the games, more than 20.8 million people used a news website or app, reaching 97% of online Australians aged over 14, accounting for the most popular month of the year so far.
Many online categories also notched up record audience numbers, including sports, games, events and attractions, the business and finance sectors, energy suppliers and social networking, according to Ipsos iris data.
Other major global stories, including the July 13 shooting at a Trump rally, Joe Biden dropping out of the US presidential race, and the UK election results, also had Australians flocking to these sources as an essential source for news.
Locally, the final game of the 2024 State of Origin series, the CFMEU corruption scandal and the series finale of Masterchef also gained online traction.
During this period, Australians spent an average of 4.6 hours online each day or almost 142 hours for the month.
Search engines were the most consumed category in July at 21.4 million, followed by social networking and technology (21.3 million respectively), retail and commerce (21.1 million) and entertainment (21 million).
In the world of sports, the annual Wimbledon tennis contest significantly boosted online sports content consumption, with the sports category up 7% (a whopping 962,000 audience) on June figures.
The business and finance sectors, energy suppliers, government and NGOs also recorded their biggest audience numbers for the year.
The business and finance sectors reached 20.4 million and 20.7 million, respectively, for the month, driven by end-of-financial-year activities, with many Australians using tax time to seek business and finance advice.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Have your say