It has been another exceptional year for News.com.au with the platform reporting significant audience gains and introducing content initiatives.
Mediaweek readers have voted the platform #1 for news coverage, also appreciating the fact it remains a free site. All three placegetters this year didn’t have a paywall.
The most recent was the announcement this week of a new daily podcast presented by news.com.au journalists Andrew Bucklow (Bucky) and Bronte Coy.
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News.com.au launches new weekday podcast series From the Newsroom
News.com.au set a new audience record for Australia in November 2019, reaching a unique audience of over 11 million for the first time in the news and current events category.
The audience growth that month was fired by its biggest day on record in November for the Melbourne Cup 2019 with a daily unique audience of 2.66 million.
News.com.au delivered the biggest digital news audience in the country over the federal election period with a monthly audience of 10.3 million for May 2019.
The platform ran a series of campaigns including a mental health and wellbeing campaign – Let’s Make Some Noise: Anxiety – during Mental Health Month to raise awareness about anxiety and highlight the true cost to employers, the community, families and sufferers.
Another 2019 campaign, this time in collaboration with the Hobart Mercury, was the campaign Let Her Speak which resulted in the Tasmanian attorney general agreeing to change the law preventing victims of rape from identifying themselves.
Helping fuel the record user numbers across the year was a site redesign and relaunch across desktop and mobile, and a new mobile app was launched.
Runners-up in the category for 2019 were Guardian Australia and ABC News.