While the Seven Network’s TV ratings have lagged behind the market leader since the end of the Winter Olympics, Seven West Media has reported rapid audience growth for its digital products in the February figures as measured by Nielsen DRM.
Seven West Media said the highlights include:
• SWM only audience showing huge 51.5% YoY growth to 4.4m – its largest ever unique monthly audience, including during the Rio 2016 Olympics.
• SWM’s OTT audience growing 24.4% YoY to reach a monthly unique audience of 2.9m.
• WAN’s unique monthly audience up 44% to 1.7m, also its largest ever online audience.
• Pacific Magazines’ unique audience up 6% YoY to 1.8m.
SWM’s chief digital officer Clive Dickens said: “The latest Nielsen data affirms the increasing strength of our digital products, and is proof that our company growth strategy is delivering results.
“These ratings reflect, of course, the outstanding performance of the Winter Olympics, which far exceeded market expectations, and highlight Seven’s ability to deliver the biggest audiences from premium event programming.
“We are particularly pleased with the early performance of 7plus which, after just two full months of operation, is already showing year on year growth.
“At our Allfronts in November we predicted we would reach an OTT unique audience of three million in April. Today’s results show we are well on track to achieve that.
“All of this means we are shaping up for a monumental Commonwealth Games, where we are confident we will see record-breaking audiences engage with Seven across our digital products and platforms to help drive great commercial outcomes for our clients.
“Another big winner of this month’s ratings is Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) reaching more Australians than the SVOD category, driven by not only the Winter Olympics but also the significant growth of 7plus and other leading FTA products.”