LEADERSHIP SPILL DRIVES SPIKE IN TOTAL TIME FOR ONLINE NEWS CONTENT

Sydney, Australia, 6 September 2018: During August 2018, 54% of time was spent accessing text news content on desktop devices, followed by smartphones at 33% and tablets at 13%, according to the latest Digital Content Ratings data released today by Nielsen.

Total time Australian online audiences spent consuming text news content spiked on 24 August with 44% more time being spent on that day than the average day that month. Contributing to this spike was liberal leadership news coverage across 21 – 23 August, followed by the announcement of Australia’s new Liberal Prime Minister on 24 August.   

Nielsen Digital Content Ratings Monthly-Tagged data for August 2018 revealed that news.com.au was the top news entity in terms of highest unique audience (9.6 million), followed by ABC News Websites (8.2 million) and then nine.com.au (8.2 million). Fourth place was Daily Mail (5.8 million).  

Next in the Nielsen online news rankings was The Guardian (4.3 million), followed by The Daily Telegraph (2.9 million) in sixth position.

In seventh position was Herald Sun (2.7 million), followed by APN Australian Regional Media  – News Network with a unique audience of 2.3 million. In ninth place was The Australian (2.2 million) followed by The West Australian (2.2 million).