The top 10 news websites continue to grow with nearly all experiencing an audience increase in February 2014, according to the latest Nielsen online ratings results. The findings also showed no change in the top seven news websites ranking versus the previous month.
The latest figures reveal that the incremental traffic to the top news sites was in part driven by a number of high-profile news stories during February, with strong connections to referrals from social media, sites such as Facebook. The strong growth versus January can also be attributed to a natural gravitation toward sites that are business, news or finance related as consumers move out of holiday mode.
People spent on average 37 hours and 12 minutes browsing news content in February 2014 and News.com.au kept its flag at the top of the list of news brands, with a unique audience of 2.9 million during the month. The Telegraph saw significant growth (+33%) and looking outside of the top ten, The Guardian (+15%) and The Australian (+23%) also recorded notable growth – The Australian is now placed over the one million unique audience mark.
Our insights also revealed a notable uplift in traffic to free to air TV websites during February, as the post-holiday, non-ratings period drew to a close and Aussie consumers turned to online platforms for catch-up TV and general TV related content.
Ninemsn’s Jump In site, recorded a 61 percent increase in unique audiences, while rival, Ten Play, also posted notable uplift of 28 percent. ABC TV Websites also recorded positive growth, up 18 percent, and surpassed the one million unique audience mark.
Yahoo!7, which currently commands the highest traffic to its site of the commercial TV players, grew its unique audience by 35 percent and attracted an incremental 447,000 thousand unique audience to its site in February.
Top news websites by unique Australian audience – February 2014
| Name | Unique Audience (000) | Page Views Per Person | Sessions Per Person | Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| news.com.au | 2,927 |
58 |
12.39 |
01:37:18 |
| smh.com.au | 2,879 |
38 |
10.88 |
01:25:46 |
| ninemsn News Websites | 2,706 |
29 |
11.63 |
00:47:24 |
| Yahoo!7 News Websites | 2,306 |
17 |
7.34 |
00:30:29 |
| ABC News Websites | 1,912 |
33 |
10.62 |
00:48:19 |
| Herald Sun | 1,644 |
24 |
7.37 |
00:45:36 |
| The Age | 1,556 |
48 |
11.77 |
01:30:00 |
| theTelegraph | 1,499 |
15 |
5.70 |
00:30:10 |
| couriermail.com.au | 1,407 |
12 |
5.26 |
00:23:18 |
| MailOnline | 1,382 |
18 |
4.89 |
00:49:35 |
Source: Nielsen Online Ratings, Hybrid data February 2014.
