Stuff.co.nz celebrates record audience numbers

Stuff.co.nz celebrates record audience numbers

Latest Nielsen Online Ratings figures show stuff.co.nz has a unique monthly audience of 1,811,000* – a new record that sees the multi-award winning news and information site close the gap between the Trade Me audience to 38,000, and strengthen its leadership position over rival news sites NZ Herald, and Yahoo! New Zealand.

Stuff has seen remarkable growth in the last year, climbing from number 8 to number 5 on the top 10 brand sites. It’s also the third consecutive month Stuff has outranked YouTube, which had a March audience of 1,758,000.

Sinead Boucher, Fairfax Media NZ Group Executive Editor, says the record numbers are a good reflection of the success of Stuff’s new drive towards a digital-centric newsroom, as well as an increasing volume of content on the successful Stuff Nation platform.

“Our dedication to digital storytelling and new digital-centric editorial and production practices have been delivering quality content to audiences, and it’s great to see these changes so well received. Our growing audience figures show New Zealanders are responding well to this editorial style.

“In addition to our consistently strong journalistic team and ongoing dedication to digital, Stuff Nation continues to be very successful and also drives significant readership,” Sinead continues. “We currently have 240,000 Stuff Nation members - many of whom contribute regularly - and we are seeing user-generated pieces feature frequently among the most read and commented articles on Stuff.”

Boucher also credits the record audience figures to Fairfax’s new content management system, introduced in December 2014. The system allows a more flexible approach to publishing and keeps up with international trends, which have seen various publications, such as global news media company Buzzfeed, experiment with how content is presented to audiences.

“We’ve put a big focus on telling stories in a digital and mobile-first way, using lots of fresh media elements like videos, images, charts, diagrams and snippets pulled out of Twitter and other sites. This is well supported by our new content management system.

“It is no secret that it is our ambition to be the biggest domestic site in New Zealand – and we are certainly on our way there,” Boucher adds.

ENDS

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