Sky News, marking its 25th birthday, released details of a major study of 7,000 Australians, run by research house Hoop Group, finding a younger audience accessing via channels other than Foxtel.
The study shows more than 9.1 million Australians, more than a third of the population, engage with Sky News each month, much of its via social media and digital channels.
A quarter (26%) get Sky News via the Foxtel platform and the rest (74%) via other platforms from its digital network such as SkyNews.com.au and Sky News Australia’s YouTube channel.
The average Sky News viewer is aged 46, driven by younger audiences accessing digital platforms more frequently than older viewers.
Sky News has an active and engaged digital audience. Of those who consider Sky News to be their main source of news, Sky News leads the pack in digital engagement accessing SkyNews.com.au (78%), Sky News YouTube (54%), and Sky News Facebook (40%).
"I think it speaks the viewer journey throughout the day," says Sky News Australia commercial director Cathryn Adams.
"News is current it's and it can't really wait till tonight when you finally get around to watching. You need to know it now.
"You might wake up and watch First Edition but then you're out and about at work and maybe you'd get into some content on Facebook or our website."
And Sky News main viewers are a more responsive audience for advertisers. Of Sky News viewers more trhan half (51%) actively support program sponsors, and 36% say they take more notice of advertising while watching Sky News.
They are significantly over-indexing for purchase consideration across all categories including financial services, banking, automotive and household goods.
"Our audience has a greater propensity to be ready to purchase across the 16 different category buying categories that we looked at," says Adams.
"We've got 51% of the people who we surveyed, who watched sky news, said that they actively suppor sponsors. If I'm an advertiser, within integrated content particularly, they're not just interested in buying what I might be offering, they actively want to support my product."
“A key purpose of this study is to quantify and understand the value and benefit for our partners in producing cross-platform integrated content partnerships,” says Adams.
“By being integrated within programming like The Alliance, Paul Murray Live Our Town, Business Weekend or Racing Dreams, our partners are accessing a much broader audience than the original TV broadcast - and reaching, younger, highly engaged Australians who are passionate about Sky News Australia and actively support sponsors.”
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