Digital engagement increases due to major sporting month

Sydney, Australia, 12 August 2019: Today, Nielsen has released the July 2019 Digital Content Ratings data. The latest insights revealed a digital content consumption explosion for sport-related text content. Time spent in accessing sports content grew 52% when comparing July 2018 to July 2019¹. This was driven by a month filled with engaging content from the Tour de France, Cricket World Cup, Wimbledon, Game 3 of State of Origin, The Women’s Football World Cup and the Netball World Cup. 

Australians accessed July sporting-content across multiple screens, but the device of choice when looking at the highest engagement was smartphones. Smartphones saw a 80% increase when compared with last year. This was followed by a 60% increase on tablets and a 13% increase in desktop¹. 

For July, 75% (15.3 Million) of social TV interactions were sport based. The State of Origin decider was the most socially engaging match with over 800K interactions².

NEWS RANKINGS

In July 2019, news.com.au was the top news entity with a unique audience of 10.1 million. It was followed by ABC News Websites (8.6 million) and nine.com.au (8.2 million) in third place. 

Next was smh.com.au (7.8 million), followed by 7NEWS (6.0 million) in fifth position. The Guardian (4.5 million) was in sixth place.

In seventh position was Daily Mail Australia (4.3 million), followed by Australian Community Media Network (3.7 million). Next was The Age (3.5 million) and Yahoo! (3.4 million) in tenth place. ³

1. Source: Nielsen Digital Content Ratings, Monthly Total July 2018 and  Monthly Tagged July 2019, Sports Category, Text, Total Time Spent, People 2+, Census.
2. Source: Nielsen Social Content Ratings, July 2019, Total Interactions, Program Genre: All, Sports Events.
3. Nielsen Digital Content Ratings, Monthly Tagged, July 2019, Current Events and Global News Sub-Category, Text, People 2+, Census.