BBC and Herald Sun grow online audience, improve Nielsen news rankings

• BBC lifts unique audience and lifts from ninth to sixth in Nielsen top 10

The latest Nielsen Digital Ratings (Monthly) has revealed 20.5 million Australians accessed content online, with 13.9 million Australians who accessed news content online during April 2018.

news.com.au was the top news entity in terms of highest unique audience (5.6 million – down from 5.8m in March), followed by nine.com.au (4.8 million) and then ABC News Websites (4.7 million). Fourth place was smh.com.au (3.6 million).

Next in the Nielsen online news rankings was Yahoo7 News Websites (2.8 million), followed by BBC (2.5 million – up from 2.4m in March) which climbed to sixth position after ranking ninth in March.

In seventh position was Herald Sun (2.5 million) which lifted from tenth to seventh, followed by The Guardian with a unique audience of 2.5 million – down from 2.8m. In ninth place was MSN (2.4 million) followed by Daily Mail Australia (2.3 million – down from 2.4m).

All publishers managed to hold in the top 10.

Herald Sun editor Damon Johnston said yesterday the results proved more Victorians were turning to the Herald Sun as their favourite source of breaking news, AFL, crime, gossip and commentary, with Commonwealth Games coverage and the Trinity Grammar haircut saga among popular stories last month.

“The Herald Sun continues to maintain its long history of providing Victorians with the news that affects them,” Johnston said.

“While some other news websites report from Sydney and hope Victorians won’t notice, our newsroom is firmly entrenched in Melbourne and our journalism is written by reporters who live in Victoria for the people who live in our state.”

Top photo: chrisdorney / Shutterstock

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