Taboola publisher data shows surge in people reading about cost of living

Taboola has been looking into its publisher data to determine the key topics that are at the front of Australians' minds right now. 

Readership data is aggregated across a network of users on a multitude of publisher sites in Australia, protecting individuals' privacy while informing advertisers about the interests of their audience. 

So what are the top three topics consuming Australians at the moment? Money, saving money, and a potential recession.

The topic of money has seen a surge of interest in the last 90 days – with online reading on news websites jumping by +55%.

In the last month, the looming recession is top of mind for Australians, resulting in increased cost of living reading online +16% and reading about Inflation is up 66%.

As a result, people are reading more (+43%) on personal finance and on investing (+500%) and in that, family and cash (+70%).

The rise in interest rates is also concerning Australians, with a 39% increase in online reading.

People are actively looking at ways to save money – from renegotiating insurance policies and loans to cooking at home

Interest in reading about loans has surged by 138% in the last 90 days, as has interest in insurance, which is up 7%, as Australians think about saving money on their insurance policies.

Cooking at home, instead of eating out, is also popular with online reading about cooking rising by 59% over the period.

However, on the shopping front retail interest is strong (+19%) but it is focused on coupons and grocery prices (+66%). Interest in cars is also up 51% to 1.4 million page views but reading about electric cars jumped 708%, again pointing to interest in saving money on petrol and being concerned about the environment.

There has also been a 339% increase in online reading about stocks.

Taboola also showed that Australians are looking at the topic of recession as the economy tightens. There have been more than 612,000 page views in the last 90 days on this topic.

See More: News Corp tackles the cost of living in Smart Savers editorial series