Written news reaches an incredible 97 per cent of Australians aged 14+ each month.
- Latest readership figures from Roy Morgan show written news reaches 97% (or 21.4M) of Australians aged 14+ each month.
- The figure reflects the evolving and deepening landscape of news media titles and readership behaviours across print and digital formats.
- Further analysis also shows that due to online accessibility, state/territory mastheads enjoy significant extended national reach on top of home state readership, revealing incremental value for advertisers.
Fresh readership figures from Roy Morgan (12 months to December 2023) show written news retaining its broad reach across the country, with 97% (or 21.4M) of Australians aged 14+ consuming news in any given month.
The figures reflect the evolving and deepening landscape of news media titles and readership behaviours across print and digital formats.
The figures also highlight ongoing affinity in Total News Publishing, as readers across all demographics actively lean into the channel, with 68M interactions per week.
ThinkNewsBrands CEO, Vanessa Lyons, said “the fresh readership figures show Total News Publishing has a vast, extremely engaged and economically resilient audience, right across the news media channel.”
State and territory mastheads reach large interstate audiences.
Further analysis of the results reveals state/territory mastheads are enjoying large readership numbers outside their local markets, due to digital accessibility.
Most state/territory mastheads effectively double their reach with inter-state audiences, demonstrating the large national interest in state/territory mastheads and the additional media value home grown titles can provide advertisers beyond their local markets.
Vanessa Lyons said, “Across all markets, home state-based readership forms a solid foundation, but this is significantly boosted by readership across the nation.”
Change in industry composition of currency.
ThinkNewsBrands wishes to announce that it has revised its industry currency to more accurately reflect category readership dynamics. This change in definition will help to ensure that agencies, advertisers and the industry can assess the evolving news readership dynamics and what these mean for marketers. As a result of this broader composition, which now includes additional written news titles, Total News Publishing reached 97% of the Australian population 14+ years. The new industry currency will be included within the December ’23 database, which will be made available to Roy Morgan Research news media subscribers.
Source: Roy Morgan, All People 14+. All audience data is based on the last 4 weeks averaged over the 12 months to December 2023. Total News Publishing is defined as Australians aged 14+ reading news in print and/or news in digital. Digital news includes Australian publishers’ news websites/apps, Apple News, and non-Australian-owned news. It also includes ABC News and Google News. All figures based on Total News Publishing definition. Total News Publishing audience measurement is independently audited by Milton Data.
About ThinkNewsBrands
ThinkNewsBrands, the industry body for written news media, is responsible for ensuring accurate and representative measurement of news audiences across both print and digital written news mediums. The organisation’s shareholders are Nine, News Corp Australia and Seven West Media’s West Australian newspapers.
Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
