While positions of big five online news portals remain unchanged in the latest Nielsen Online Ratings insights for June 2015, Yahoo7 and The Guardian both moved up the list.
Despite both sites reporting slight declines in unique audience in June compared to May 2015, Yahoo7 news websites jumped up two places in the latest month’s rankings, from ninth to seventh place, and The Guardian lifted from seventh to sixth place (see chart below).
For the eighth straight month in a row digital news service News.com.au held on to the top spot in current events and global news rankings - according to the latest
The NewsLifeMedia site site, which has a team of 30 journalist aims to offer a national viewpoint with articles from Australia and around the world, drew in a unique audience of 3.72 million in the month of June.
Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) online (Smh.com.au) continues to sit in second spot, with 3.46 million unique views.
Not only do readers spend longer on the News.com.au than the SMH online, but they read far more stories per sitting.
News.com.au smashes the SMH with page views per session, with 62 page views per person, compared to SMH's 33 pages.
Readers spent one hour 40 minutes (per person) in June on News.com.au, and nearly 20 minutes less on the SMH online (one hour 19 minutes).
In third spot is the ABC News websites, with 2.73 million uniques, followed by Daily Mail Australia and then Ninemsn News websites.
While the top five players in the current events and global news category by unique audience remained unchanged, there were shifts in rankings for the next big five (see below).
Also, digital-savvy Australians reinforced their appetite for financial related news information with an additional one million people visiting a site in the financial news and information sub-category in June, compared to the same period last year (+23%).
Director of Nielsen’s Media Industry Group, John Price, said that growth is usually expected in June for financial news related sites due to the end of financial year, but the year-on-year growth reveals an upward consumer trend - with double digit growth reported by most of the top 10 sites.
“Almost one-third of the online Australian population now consume financial related news content,” Price said.
Drivers of growth for the financial news an information sub-category came from News.com.au – Finance with an additional 278,000 unique audiences to their site in June, compared to the prior year (+23%), followed by Smh.com.au – Business, with an additional 252,000 (+31%), and ASX – Australian Stock Exchange attracted an additional 245,000 unique users to their site in June, 2015 compared to the prior year (+70%).
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.