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Stuff sees strong audience growth across online and print brands
Sinead Boucher, Stuff owner and publisher
Stuff Group has seen significant growth in its digital, print and magazine audiences over the past three months, once again taking the number one position in both digital and print among competitors.
New results from Nielsen show that in May, stuff.co.nz attracted 2,328,000 New Zealanders. It is now 574,000 Kiwis ahead of its nearest competitor, an increase of 13,000 on the previous month.
Stuff.co.nz has the largest audience in Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Canterbury, and more people are choosing it as their primary digital news source.
Impressive growth
As Stuff Digital continues to climb, so too do Stuff’s Masthead Publishing subscriber digital and print news brands.
The combined digital and print readership of the national The Post, the South Island’s The Press and the Waikato Times has grown 6% year on year, with more than 1.5 million New Zealanders choosing to get their news from these subscriber brands.
Of this number, 848,000 are digital readers with the subscriber digital network up 5% on the previous month.
Stuff’s premium magazines also experienced considerable growth over the past quarter – New Zealand House & Garden now has more than 400,000 readers, up 7% on the previous year. New Zealand Gardener magazine experienced a similar increase, up 8% year on year to a loyal audience of 264,000 readers.
The winning strategy
Stuff owner and publisher Sinead Boucher says the separation of the Group’s Stuff Digital and Masthead Publishing businesses two years ago had set each on their own audience, revenue and growth trajectories and today’s results show the benefits of that strategy.
“Stuff Digital’s singular focus on user experience and relevant content has seen three months of significant growth with more than half a million more Kiwis choosing stuff.co.nz for their news than any other news brand,” she says.
“This has not come at the expense of our masthead brands – their reach is increasing as digital subscriber numbers grow through their focus on quality journalism tailored for each discrete audience.
“The increasingly national reach of thepost.co.nz with its focus on politics, business and economics is particularly striking. 81% of its readership is now from out of the Wellington region and it grew its combined digital and print audience by 7% over the previous quarter,” Boucher adds.
“For our commercial partners, being able to segment and engage specific audiences through our targeted publications is critically important in a constrained economy.
“In stuff.co.nz, we have the largest New Zealand website audience which more closely mirrors the demographics of the population than our nearest competitor.
“Added to this is our recently announced partnership with Trade Me, another great Kiwi brand which is intrinsic to the daily lives of New Zealanders. There are exciting opportunities ahead to explore together as we work through the next stage of this new joint venture,” says Boucher.
