d’Almeida pleased as The Sunday Times and PerthNow buck national readership trend

The Sunday Times and its website PerthNow is one of only four news brands across Australia to buck the national trend of readership decline, recording a total audience increase of 6.4% to 1.36 million people.

The Sunday Times Managing Director Michelle d’Almeida (pictured) said: “It’s great to see News Corp leading the way for WA publishers and growing our cross platform audience. These results demonstrate we’re continuing to provide content that is valuable and that people want to spend time with; be it on Sunday or throughout the week which is a huge plus for advertisers.”

d’Almeida said the PerthNow digital platform has also seen growth in the last 3 months.

“Over the last three months, there has been a 6.9% increase in people accessing PerthNow via a computer, tablet or mobile, with 41% more people accessing PerthNow via mobile this year compared to last. Both nationally and in WA, PerthNow was the only WA based digital brand to see an increase in the number of users.”

In the December quarter, The Sunday Times and PerthNow saw a 5.4% increase in their WA only audience to reach 59% of the West Australian population.  Readership of The Sunday Times has also seen its second quarterly increase. Australia wide, The Sunday Times and PerthNow saw an increase of 6.4%reaching 1.36 million people.

“The Sunday Times is read by 485,000 people each week. This is more than 25.2% of the population in WA and a 0.4% increase on last quarter,” said d’Almeida. “We have an exclusive audience with 143,000 and 200,000 people reading The Sunday Times who aren’t reading The Weekend West and The West Australian respectively.”

The most recent emma data also affirmed News Corp Australia’s position as Australia’s leading print and digital publisher, with a reach of over 14.71 million Australians each month or 82% of the population, and leading positions in news, sport, food and business.

Source: emmaTM conducted by Ipsos MediaCT December 2015, P14+; Nielsen Market Intelligence and Online Answers, January-March 2015