News.com.au had the largest digital news audience in the country during the federal election period producing a monthly audience of 10.3m for May 2019, according to Nielsen Digital Content Ratings monthly data.
This was the highest unique audience in the current events and global news category in Australia, with an audience margin of 110,000 ahead of the ABC News Websites and 2.1m ahead of nine.com.au.
News.com.au editor-in-chief Kate de Brito said: “We are extremely proud that we were the first choice of Australian readers for the 2019 federal election month.
“May was always going to be an extremely competitive month in digital news. With that in mind our team worked incredibly hard to prepare an editorial coverage plan to bring Australians the best election news in the country and defend our position as the leading digital news source in Australia.”
The Nielsen DCR data released today also shows:
• News.com.au’s average daily unique audience in May was 1.6 million
• The site delivered 263 million page views for the month
• There were 9.3 sessions per person with average time spent at 29 minutes
• Six of the top 10 news.com.au stories for the month of May were focused on the election with the most read story being the federal election results.
News.com.au general manager Melissa Overman said: “This is the result of many months of hard work for the whole team at news.com.au. The editorial, video, product, delivery, social and analytics teams all worked together to bring every angle of the election to Australians in a way that resonated with audiences and demonstrates the pivotal role digital news plays in their lives.
“News.com.au has great momentum and the learnings that we have taken out of the election month are already in practice, particularly in video which increased by 30% month-on-month. We will continue to evolve our newsroom and build on the success of our products with exciting plans ahead.”