ABC News websites continue to top digital news rankings as Nine overtakes news.com.au

Nielsen Digital Content Ratings data released this week sees ABC News again #1. Australians spent 36.31m hours consuming news content online for the month of December 2020, an increase of 22% when compared to December 2019.

Nielsen Digital Content Ratings also reported an increase of 43% in the cumulative time spent with the overall current events and global news subcategory in 2020 when compared to 2019.

2020 saw a number of major news events such as the Australian bushfires, COVID-19 and the US Presidential Election.

Nine.com.au moves to second place

ABC News websites retained the top position, with a unique audience of 11.4 million for the month of December 2020.

nine.com.au moved up from third to second position with a unique audience of 10.6 million, followed by news.com.au with a unique audience of 10.4 million. 7NEWS moved up one place to obtain the fourth position with a unique audience of 9.4 million, whilst smh.com.au dropped one place and ranked fifth with a unique audience of 9.1 million.

News.com.au audience holds above 10m

Despite dropping from #1 to #3 in the past 12 months, the news.com.au audience has held steady above 10m uniques a month. However ABC News, nine.com.au and 7NEWS have all significantly improved their numbers year-on-year for the month of December.

ABC had its first audience ever over 10m in December 2019 and moved into second place with 10.05m, pushing Nine lower to third place with 9.43m.