News.com.au still leader of the pack, but news audiences drop

April was a month full of holidays with Easter and Anzac Day close together tempting many people to add extra days to take an extended break in the latter half of the month.

That is the explainer behind why, across the board, audiences for news publishers were down.

In March the market leader, news.com.au, recorded a Nielsen Digital Content Ratings audience of 10.63m. However in April that dipped to 9.63m – exactly the loss of 1m.

The audience data was released earlier this week.

All publishers in the top 10 saw their audiences decline.

There was no change in the rankings of the top eight publishers month-on-month.

The only change in the top 10 was the Fairfax Digital Regional Network exiting the top 10 to be replaced by the Herald Sun with a unique audience of 2.03m.