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TIME SPENT ON NEWS SITES UP. SMH KEEPS TOP SPOT

2 minute read | October 2014
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• SMH retained top spot in the online news category• Six of the top ten news sites reported double digit growth in time spent• Close to 5 million online Australians streamed news video content 

SYDNEY: October 14, 2014 – More than 17.6 million Aussies went online during September 2014 and consumed just over 37 hours of digital content during the month, according to results released today by Nielsen.

Latest results from Nielsen Online Ratings found of those who went online, more than half (9.9 million) visited a ‘current events and global news’ site and consumed close to three hours (2 hours, 51 minutes) of digital news content during September 2014.  

Nielsen confirmed that unique audience to current events and global news sites dipped slightly for September compared to the prior month (-2.5%) but that time spent was notably up (+11%). “Big news months typically drive incremental, casual news consumers who just ‘drop in’ for specific news content,” revealed Monique Perry, Head of Nielsen’s Media Industry Group. “The September universe is an expected normalising of the market. What we have seen this month is that those who visited news sites have spent more time engaging with this content compared to last month.”

Six of the top ten news sites reported double digit growth in the time spent metric during September compared to the prior month, led by The Guardian, (+47%) and BBC (+28%). The Age and news.com.au remained the most engaged sites based on time spent metrics, (see chart below.)

Nielsen Online Ratings unique audience data confirmed SMH retained top spot in the online news category while Daily Mail (+2.2%) and The Age (+9.9%) had growth in unique audience in September 2014, compared to the prior month.  

Close to 5 million Australians streamed current events and global news video content in September 2014. Channel Nine News is the top streaming site in this category in terms of unique audience, followed by SMH and News.com.au. ABC has the highest time spent streaming current events and global news video content. 

TABLE 1. TOP SITES RANKED BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE FOR NEWS

Name

Unique Audience (000)

Page Views Per Person

Sessions Per Person

Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)

smh.com.au

3,607

36

10.80

01:07:17

news.com.au

3,569

55

13.57

01:30:22

ninemsn News Websites

3,129

24

10.77

00:42:08

ABC News Websites

2,518

26

8.38

00:39:37

Daily Mail Australia

2,508

15

5.87

00:49:26

The Age

2,082

41

12.14

01:42:57

The Guardian

1,934

14

6.03

00:48:19

Yahoo!7 News Websites

1,911

19

8.06

00:27:20

Herald Sun

1,713

19

8.28

00:43:20

BBC

1,492

27

6.82

00:48:24

Source: Nielsen Online Ratings, Hybrid data September, 2014.

ABOUT NIELSENNielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television, and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows, and related properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA, and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

Press Contact:Jackie Helliker, 0403 074 864, jackie.helliker@nielsen.com