ABC News outranked news.com.au for news of Queen’s death, Nielsen’s new DCR figures show
The first data from Nielsen's new Digital Content Ratings product shows ABC News topped the unique audience list on September 9, the day Queen Elizabeth died. Right: Nielsen's Monique Perry.
The first public data from Nielsen’s play to compete for digital audience measurement dollars against industry endorsed Ipsos has landed, showing 2.6m Australians read ABC News websites on the day Queen Elizabeth II died. News.com.au ranked second, with 2.5m. After conceding it had fell short in recent years, Nielsen is now aggressively competing with IAB pick Ipsos, whose measurement system has not yet launched despite being slated for Q2 this year.
What you need to know:
- New Nielsen data shows ABC News websites had the highest unique audiences on September 9, the day Queen Elizabeth II died.
- ABC News topped news.com.au by 110,000, with 2.6m versus 2.5m.
- This is the first data from Nielsen’s new Digital Content Ratings product, which launched last month to compete with the impending industry-endorsed Ipsos product.
Digital audience measurement company Nielsen has shared the first data from its new Digital Content Ratings product, showing ABC News sites drew a larger audience than News Corp Australia’s news.com.au on the day Queen Elizabeth II died last month.
That Friday, September 9, there was a 52 per cent rise in the amount of time spent by Aussie audiences on online news sites compared to other Fridays, Nielsen said. ABC News websites drew a unique audience of 2.63 million people, while news.com.au had 2.52m. Nine.com.au had 1.91m, Daily Mail Australia had 1.46m and 7NEWS had 1.18m.
“This granular daily audience data demonstrates the ever-increasing importance of online news and the impact major events and topical issues have on daily audience numbers,” Nielsen said in a statement.
The company’s DCR launched last month, kicking off a competitive clash as it said it would stay in market despite losing the official IAB endorsement as the currency provider for digital audiences. Ipsos was named “exclusive and preferred” supplier by the IAB last year, and despite assurances it would be in market in Q3, it has now been delayed well into Q4 of this year.
Nielsen Pacific MD, Monique Perry, conceded it had not met industry expectations over the past couple of years since losing a crucial data alliance with Facebook.
“I appreciate it was tough. There was data delays and things that were caused by a single provider. And we learnt from that. And every step along the way we learnt from that. And I feel like this market had to do a lot of the learning,” she said.
“We paid the ultimate price there. But our commitment remains, globally and locally, to progress audience measurement. Digital is no different. Whether it be the ads or the content, that is no different. And I feel like we have something to offer.”
Its DCR product now has a series of new data partnerships in place, a panel of 10,000, 10 million IDs associated with Australians, and 57 million devices.
