Millennials embraced in latest news.com.au consumer campaign
With more than 10 million unique visitors to its website each month, news.com.au is a firmly entrenched voice in the national conversation.
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With more than 10 million unique visitors to its website each month, news.com.au is a firmly entrenched voice in the national conversation.
But in a highly competitive news market, the battle for a bigger slice of the youth audience — which consumes media in a much different manner to older generations — is the most pressing challenge for online players.
On Monday, news.com.au (owned by News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian) will launch a new consumer campaign, aimed squarely at Millennials and the older cohort of their generational successors, Gen Z, with a view to cementing the website’s market dominance among the under-40s demographic.
With a tag line of ‘be on it’, the major campaign will be pushed out on social media, digital platforms, as well as free-to-air and subscription TV.
Editor-in-chief Lisa Muxworthy says news.com.au boasts the highest level of audience engagement (time spent online per visit) of any commercial website in Australia, but admits the time is right to make a fresh pitch for new readers.
“News.com.au has such a solid, loyal audience, and we’ll keep serving them and we’ll keep bringing them the news that matters,” she says.
“But how do we grow, how do we expand, how do we evolve? That’s around younger audiences — Millennials, Gen Z — and I think this campaign definitely speaks to them. It says that we’re young and we’re fresh.”
Muxworthy says the website will be strengthening its offerings on issues that are of ever-increasing interest to a young adult market, with more targeted content in areas including personal finance, investing, the environment, climate change and relationships.
“It’s content that we have on our site already, but it’s how we bring that together and deliver it to a younger audience in a fresh way on different platforms.”
The website will be producing more podcasts in coming months, and will also be featuring more video material, Muxworthy says.
Managing director of news.com.au, Richard Skimin, says the website exceeded its own expectations during the coronavirus crisis, and the new consumer campaign aims to build on that success.
“If we go back 12 months, audiences were volatile and the outlook was uncertain. But if we look to where we are now, we’re in a better position than our ‘best case’ scenario,” he says.
The website is also set to trial a new membership product over coming weeks, which will offer news.com.au’s readers an “ad-lite” premium membership for $4.99 per month.
Under the offer, members will be able to navigate the site without exposure to traditional advertising; they will also receive a daily newsletter from Muxworthy, exclusive offers from commercial partners, and a free coffee via the Hey You app.
However, all of news.com.au’s content will remain unlocked for every reader, and non-members will “not notice anything different”, Skimin says.
He says the $4.99 membership is a “niche product for a niche market”, and maintains that the business model of news.com.au will remain “ad-funded”.
“There will still be opportunities for advertisers through this product, but it will be through native content, and offers consistent with a premium user experience,” Skimin says.
As part of a revised newsroom structure, Muxworthy recently appointed longtime news.com.au journalist Oliver Murray as editor, and Jai Bednall — the website’s former sports editor — as Head of Growth.
Muxworthy is also looking to appoint a Millennial editor.
“Oliver’s a news man … he’s got a real understanding of news.com.au’s audience. And Jai will help us identify new demographics or topics of growth and he will be heavily involved in the transformation of our app,” Muxworthy says.
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Originally published as Millennials embraced in latest news.com.au consumer campaign
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