• Nine #1 for time spent and audience engagement, #3 commercial news site
• First full month since site relaunched from ninemsn.com.au to nine.com.au
Nine Entertainment news website nine.com.au has surged in the July Nielsen news rankings, with a significant improvement in both its unique audience figure and also taking out the coveted first place in time spent on-site, following its successful rebranding in late June 2016.
The July figures for Nielsen’s monthly news rankings showed the new-look nine.com.au had the best audience engagement within the top 10 when it comes to time spent on-site, with an average of 58 minutes and 41 seconds time spent per person.
Last month nine.com.au had 4.537 million Australians visit its online properties, making it the third most read commercial news website in Australia. This change comes in the wake of both the successful rebranding of nine.com.au and a subsequent review by Nielsen, which in line with other publishers brings all relevant nine.com.au news content together in the one UA figure.
For the first time advertisers will have one unique audience figure for all of nine.com.au’s online news properties, including not only the nine.com.au homepage but also its various breaking news, sports, entertainment and lifestyle verticals.
The July 2015 figure for Ninemsn news websites was 2.53m. The June 2016 news figure was 2.75m but this figure did not include the homepage, entertainment or lifestyle verticals. It does not include advertising video on demand (AVOD) service 9Now.
Alex Parsons, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer of Nine Entertainment, said the improvement in audience was a clear vindication of the Nine Digital strategy undertaken in the wake of the 2013 buyout of Microsoft, which ultimately saw traffic from Microsoft online properties cease being directed to the company’s homepage.
“In moving from Ninemsn to nine.com.au, one of Australia’s favourite destinations for news, sport, entertainment and lifestyle content, we have evolved our business,” said Parsons. “Today’s result is an early reflection of the rollout of both our rich and dynamic content and also our strong commercial strategy.”
The result comes after one of Australia’s leading editorial executives Helen McCabe recently joined the Nine Digital business as head of lifestyle, overseeing fashion and beauty site 9Honey, travel site 9Elsewhere, diet and fitness site 9Coach, interior design site 9Homes and the recently launched food site 9Kitchen.
Nine Digital has also been making other significant investments around the nine.com.au online business, with a recent multimillion-dollar advertising campaign running across television and outdoor and a series of other new editorial appointments, including Damien Woolnough as consulting editor for 9Honey, Kelly Baker as beauty editor of 9Honey and Brandi Fowler as LA correspondent for 9TheFix.