To hear more from News Digital Medias CEO Richard Freudenstein, check out this exclusive video interview we conducted with him when we were at the Advertising and Marketing Summit in Sydney last week.

News Digital Media has released the results of the largest
ever survey of its online audience as part of an aggressive new
marketing campaign highlighting the value of the audience delivered
across the network’s 23 sites.

The results have been compiled to create The News Digital Media Insight Report.

The survey, conducted for News Digital Media during May and June,
attracted almost 13,000 respondents. The survey found that users across
News Digital Medias news, sport, entertainment, search and shopping
sites spend twice as long online than the average Australian.

Those respondents reported an average of almost 28 hours online each
week, against the national average reported earlier this year of just
less than 14 hours.

Richard Freudenstein, chief executive officer, News Digital
Media, said the findings are the first measure of what makes the News
Digital Media audience unique.

In the face of extraordinary growth over the past two
years, its been a challenge to define our audience, Mr Freudenstein
said.

Sites that deliver large audiences usually have low
engagement, but the results of this survey show that our audience of
almost 10 million unique browsers per month is highly engaged with the
deep, quality content were providing. 

Our audience spends twice as long online as the average
Australian – and they spend more time engaged with the internet than
with any other medium. Our audience is always on – wanting the latest
and greatest – and turning to us 24 hours a day to find what they
need. 

By looking at their behaviour online and understanding
more about their backgrounds, we have been able to identify our
audience as a significant group of motivated consumers. It clear from
the findings that the quality of the content we produce is key to
this.

The News Digital Media Insight Report, to be produced quarterly, also found that:

• Email is the thing we do most often online, but banking,
  pre-purchase research, and keeping up with the latest news and weather
  are regarded as the most important functions of the internet –
  particularly among high income households. 
• The internet is seen as the most useful source of information about
  technology, entertainment bookings, travel, financial services,
  insurance and property and housing.
• Over 87 percent of News Digital Medias audience research products
  they are considering buying online, and 79 percent have purchased
  online. 
• People are more likely to buy or sell from the internet if they
  trust the site. Our audience is four times more likely to trust the
  content of News Digital Media sites they visit than
  general online content. 
• 98 percent of all respondents access the internet more than once a
  day and on average they access 4.6 times daily during the week. On
  weekends, 94 percent access the internet more than once, doing so an
  average of 3.4 times each day.
• 81 percent of respondents access the internet at home during the
  week and 90 percent of respondents access the internet at home on
  weekends.  
• Site loyalty is strong. 58 percent of visitors visit NEWS.com.au
  several times a day for the latest news, weather and entertainment –
  and 86 percent of visitors visit the site at least once a week.
• 42 percent say the internet is not essential to organising their
  social lives but 74 percent value the ability of the internet to help
  them stay in touch; 97 percent use email; 50 percent use social
  networking sites; and 49 percent use instant messaging. 
• People are spending an average 14 hours and 54 minutes each workday
  across different forms of media – multi-tasking their media consumption
  while they work and play.

The challenge for many content providers is to clearly identify and define who their audience is,
so that they can both continue to deliver the content that that
audience wants and needs, but also so that they can continue to deliver
that audience to interested advertising partners. The ability to
deliver targeted advertising and the effectiveness of that advertising
to an audience depends largely on your knowledge of that audience.

To hear more from News Digital Medias CEO Richard Freudenstein, check out this exclusive video interview we conducted with him when we were at the Advertising and Marketing Summit in Sydney last week.