News Corp’s kidsnews.com.au audience growth attracts new sponsor

As one of the fastest growing educational sites in the country, Kids News – News Corp Australia’s free news site for students, teachers and parents – has doubled its traffic in one year, launched a new-look national site with added functionality and revealed a new category sponsor in Westpac.

Since launching in March 2018 with financial support from the Herald & Weekly Times and News Corp’s News in the Community initiative, kidsnews.com.au has grown its audience to almost 200,000 registered students and attracted more than 5.1 million views in 2018.

The strong growth has continued in 2019 with almost 1 million page views per month and students engaging with kidsnews.com.au content for more than 2500 hours per week.

The new-look site now offers more than 1300 stories on 20 different news topics including science, technology, money, health, humanities, space, animals and sport.

Penny Fowler, chairman of the Herald & Weekly Times and News Corp Australia’s Community Ambassador said: “Expanding Kids News makes me immensely proud, as it means our News in the Community program is delivering on our commitment to investing in educating the next generation and improving children’s literacy, our readers and leaders of the future.”

Toni Hetherington, national education publisher at News Corp Australia and editor of Kids News said: “Kids News has captured the imaginations of students and introduced them to daily news topics and information they never knew they were interested in, while improving their general knowledge, curiosity about the world around them, and literacy skills.

“Educators have found the information and resources provided by Kids News invaluable as a teaching tool. Parents have also been overwhelmingly appreciative of the site, as it lets their kids stay up to date with relevant news that’s written in appropriate language and helps parents engage in conversation with their children at home on news topics.

“Brands from various industry sectors including technology and finance have seen the value in sponsoring and advertising with Kids News and the individual topic verticals as an effective way to reach this highly engaged audience of teachers, parents of young children and students predominantly aged eight to 14 years.”

Westpac has signed a two-year sponsorship of the Money section in Kids News, where the content aims to improve the financial literacy of children, teachers and parents across Australia.

Hetherington added: “Kids News remains free to use in 2019, and as there are so many benefits for each target audience, our goal is to continue growing our numbers and improving literacy levels, general knowledge and teaching resources for students, parents and teachers around the country.”

The consumer-facing campaign promoting Kids News begins in paper on Monday 4 March, with high impact placements including U shape, DPS, large strips and full page executions across all of News Corp Australia’s metro and regional mastheads. The campaign, created by News Corp Australia Creative Services will feature predominantly in kids and educational sections of the newspapers for one week.