News.com.au and Nine.com.au were the largest digital publishers in April, according to Nielsen's Digital Ratings.
News.com.au was the top news site with a unique audience of 5.6 million, followed by nine.com.au (4.8m) and ABC News Websites (4.7m).
Fourth place was Fairfax's smh.com.au with an audience of 3.6m, following by Yahoo7 News Websites (2.8m).
BBC had 2.5m unique viewers in sixth position, seventh position went to Herald Sun (2.5m), followed by The Guardian (2.5m), MSN (2.4m) and Daily Mail (2.3m).
Nearly 14 million Australians accessed online news content from the major publishers in that month.
Nielsen to release monthly, weekly figures
Nielsen MD of media Monique Perry reaffirmed Nielsen's commitment to evolving industry measurement as she announced Nielsen will switch on both monthly and weekly reporting frequencies in Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) from June.
While monthly and weekly reporting frequencies are a step forward, media buyers have long called for daily digital ratings.
“From June 2018, the IAB Australia-endorsed digital rankings published will be monthly metrics from Nielsen DCR. The media industry has had visibility of the DCR expanded coverage via daily data for nearly 12 months and now we are excited to add both weekly and monthly audiences into DCR," Perry says.
Perry adds its an important step for the IAB and one its clients are eager to have access to.
"We will communicate further around the use of both DCR and DRM in market, however we feel it’s important to let you know we intend to open up the DCR reporting frequencies and expanded coverage for the market to better inform digital media planning and buying, as well as publisher content strategies,” she says.
Earlier this year, Fairfax cut ties with Nielsen, but IAB director of research Gai Le Roy believes the need for independent, verified media metrics that are comparable across players is "stronger than ever".
“The IAB is pleased with the release of DCR for monthly and weekly rankings in addition to the existing daily data. This move will enable publishers, large and small, to report their total audiences for text and video," she says.
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