An extra half a million Australian’s visited a mass retail or home and garden site in June
16 of the top 20 mass retail sites recorded growth – five had double digit growth
14 of the top 20 sites in the home and garden category had double digit growth

SYDNEY: 15 JULY, 2014 – An incremental half a million Australians visited a mass retail or home and garden site in June, compared to the prior month and notable growth was achieved by an overwhelming portion of the top 20 sites from each of these two retail categories, according to results released today by Nielsen, a global leading provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy.

Latest Nielsen Online Ratings findings for June 2014 reveal five of the top 20 online mass retail sites delivered double digit growth, as did 14 of the top 20 home and garden sites. Bunnings Warehouse (+24%) posted the highest lift in incremental unique audience with 358,000 more people in June, followed by Kmart Australia (+282,000), and David Jones (+232,000) which grew its unique audience by 38.9 percent compared to the prior month.

“With end of financial year sales and the popularity of ‘do it yourself’ programs on TV, we have seen very strong growth in websites in both the mass merchandiser and home and garden categories,” commented Monique Perry, Head of Nielsen’s Media Industry Group. “Shoppers are shifting in increasingly seamless ways across retail and research channels. They demand seamless, dynamic and transparent content across platforms and on any device. The future of retail is truly borderless.”

Latest Nielsen Online Ratings results for June 2014 revealed notable growth in sports websites, contributed to by major events such as State of Origin, The World Cup and Wimbledon. Highlights include:

• SBS The World Game increased surfing unique audience by 333 percent followed by FIFA.com up 298 percent. News.com.au-sport and Fox Sports grew 28 percent and 23 percent respectively
• smh.com.au-sport increased streaming unique audience by 227 percent and SBS Sport had growth of 101 percent in streaming audience.
• ninemsn-wide world of sport also had very strong growth in streaming with 47 percent increase in engagement with site content.

“With 7.5 million Australians engaging with sport content online in June, this increasingly important touch-point is great news for advertisers looking to connect with sports enthusiasts,” said Perry. “Consumers are expanding their engagement with sport content from traditional audio and screen platforms and adding online and mobile devices – connecting them with more sport content whether digital, live or otherwise.”

Looking at the News & Information category, news.com.au has moved back to the top of the unique audience ranks according Nielsen, recording 2.4 percent growth in June compared to May, as smh.com.au settled back to second position. Other notable growth by mastheads in the top ten include; The Age (+6.1%), Herald Sun (+4.9%) and The Daily Mail (+3.3%).

TABLE 1. TOP SITES RANKED BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE FOR NEWS

Source: Nielsen Online Ratings, Hybrid data June 2014.


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