Australians’ time spent online reaches 2024 peak, driving record results across multiple categories
22 August 2024 – The 2024 Paris Olympics dominated news and sport coverage throughout July, as Australians sought out all the excitement and results from the games, Ipsos iris data for July has revealed.
Extensive coverage of the start of the 2024 Games in late July across multiple outlets, particularly the build-up to the official opening festivities, the Opening Ceremony (featuring performances from Lady Gaga and Celine Dion), along with Aussie fan-favourite sports like swimming and football, saw a surge in people visiting news websites and apps for up-to-the-minute updates.
Online usage time peaked nationwide in July, with Australians spending more time online last month than any month to-date in 2024. Many online categories also notched up record audience numbers for 2024 in July, including sport, games, events and attractions, the business and finance sectors, energy suppliers and social networking.
While the 2024 Paris Olympics was the mainstay across major headlines, other breaking local and international events also captured Australians’ attention on news websites and apps.
Major global stories, including the July 13 shooting at a Trump rally, Joe Biden dropping out of the US presidential race, the worldwide CrowdStrike tech outage that affected many businesses globally, and the French and UK election results, had Australians flocking to digital news websites and apps as an essential source for their news. Locally, the final game of the 2024 State of Origin series, the CFMEU corruption scandal and the series finale of Masterchef sparked Australians’ interest.
More than 20.8 million people used a news website or app in July, reaching 97% of online Australians aged 14+.
The chart below shows the News brands’ ranking during July 2024 by online audience size.
Ipsos iris, Australia’s digital audience measurement currency endorsed by IAB Australia, showed that overall, 21.4 million Australians aged 14+ used the internet in July, spending an average of 4.6 hours online per day, or almost 142 hours for the month – the most time notched up so far in 2024.
Search engines was the most consumed category in July at 21.4 million, followed by social networking and technology (21.3 million respectively), retail and commerce (21.1 million) and entertainment (21 million).
The Paris Olympics, along with the deciding clash of the State of Origin and the annual Wimbledon tennis contest, significantly boosted online sports content consumption, with the sports category up 7% (a whopping 962,000 audience) on June figures.
The chart below shows the Sports brands’ ranking during July 2024 by online audience size.
Record audiences for business and finance categories
The business and finance sectors, along with energy suppliers, and government and NGOs, recorded their biggest audience numbers for the year so far in July.
The business and finance sectors reached 20.4 million and 20.7 million respectively for the month, driven by end-of-financial-year activities, with many Australians using tax time to seek out business and finance advice.
Changes to electricity prices, introduced nationwide on July 1, contributed to the largest audience this year for the energy suppliers category (a record 9.7 million audience in July) with time spent increasing 18% year on year
The technology category also saw a 16% increase in average time spent per person in July, up on average 40 minutes on the previous month. The average person spent 294 minutes browsing the category. The timing of the spike coincides with the CrowdStrike outage, with people spending longer on these sites and apps searching for updates and information on possible effects to their business and any solutions to the issue.
Ipsos iris, which officially launched in March 2023, provides accurate data about the 21.4 million Australians aged 14+ who access a wide variety of digital content and services across smartphone, PC/laptop and tablet devices.
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