Julia Gillard’s ascension to Prime Minister has smashed online records for Fairfax Digital properties, as well as nineMSN.

Fairfax Digital reported the Gillard traffic blew away both the Black Saturday Bushfires and Michael Jackson’s death. According to the media owner, smh.com.au recorded more than one million page impressions per hour for two consecutive hours between 9am and 11am.

smh.com.au saw 46% higher page impressions and 66% higher hourly unique browsers than on Black Saturday. Comparatively, TheAge.com.au saw 8% higher page impressions and 61% higher hourly unique browsers.

nineMSN is expecting four million unique hits by day’s end, which would break the previous record of 3.7 million achieved when Barack Obama won the US presidential election in 2008. The network served 300,000 live video streams, setting a record for its highest number in a single 24 hour period.

Jack Matthews, CEO of Fairfax Digital, believes today’s traffic indicates Australians now demand multimedia delivery of political information.

Memery, owned by Matt Granfield, Marketingmag.com.au guru blogger and Marketing magazine writer, leapt on the opportunity for a client’s promotional tour.