What IpsosIris tells – or doesn’t tell – about online audiences

Mar 09, 2023 at 02:38 am by admin


Another week, another measure – and ranking – of newsmedia audience.

This time it’s the new Ipsos Iris measurement system, launched in the hope of providing accurate data about Australians’ online activity for advertisers.

Endorsed by the IAB, the system is based on a “cross-device single-source panel made up of around 8,000 devices”. In fact it appears you can join it via their website, and be “paid handsomely” to have software added to your devices.

Findings are interesting – that the average Australian spent 107 hours online across all devices in January, most of that time on social media, which reached 20.9 million, closely followed by search (20.9 million), technology (20.8 million), retail & commerce (20.6 million), and entertainment (20.5 million) followed behind.

In the news industry however, there will be comparisons with the ThinkNewsBrands and Roy Morgan Total News figures released a week earlier.

News figures on Ipsos Iris include audiences of media owner content distributed on platforms such as Google AMP, Facebook, and Apple News, as do the digital news figures in the ThinkNewsBrands release. The definition for the latter however, is Australians aged 14+ reading news in print and/or news in digital.

GXpress was intrigued by the fact that Guardian Australia did not appear anywhere in the ThinkNewsBrands figures – despite an assurance that it had been included in the survey – but came sixth in the Ipsos Iris news figures.

Ipsos ANZ chief executive Simon Wake claims “a new standard of measurement” to the industry for the Ipsos Iris system, built in conjunction with the IAB, with accuracy in cross-device usage and audience duplication.

The news from ThinkNewsBrands and Roy Morgan Total News was a familiar 20.6 million Australians over the age of 14 “engaging with news every month”.

“The readership figures, produced by Roy Morgan for ThinkNewsBrands, refer to the 12 months to December 2022 and show that Total News reaches 97 per cent of the population over the age of 14,” it said in a statement. “Total News represents all news brands across print and digital as well as standalone news websites.”

The ten most-read news brands were:

Top 10 news brands (print & digital)        Last 12 months

(4 weekly average)

The Sydney Morning Herald           8.1 million

The Age          5.6 million

The Herald Sun         4.3 million

The Australian           4.3 million

WAN (West Australian & Perth Now)         4.0 million

The Daily Telegraph 4.0 million

The Australian Financial Review     3.6 million

The Courier Mail       3.0 million

The Adelaide Advertiser      1.7 million

The Saturday Paper 0.9 million

 

Note perhaps that NewsCorp Australia’s audience is grouped under a single news.com.au address in the Ipsos Iris figures, but identified by the company’ separate metro brand sites in ThinkNewsBrands. Does that make a difference? Perhaps to Guardian Australia, which appears decently up the top ten in the IpsosIris figures. Guardian incidentally, did not respond to an enquiry from GXpress about their ThinkNewsBrands ranking.

–Peter Coleman

Pictured: Enigma: The Guardian Australia homepage

Sections: Digital business

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