The interest.co.nz team enjoyed our end of year function recently. We had much to celebrate.
And readers may also be interested in some of the 2024 activity and results that we shared at that function.
We have had a successful 2024 from a readership perspective. It has been a tough year for media generally, and we also suffer from being revenue-challenged. But we are engaging with a much larger audience this year, and that brings some benefits.
On our website we have a link that includes these charts.
This gives a good perspective on how 2024 compares with other recent years.
The top chart tracks the number of individual pages readers accessed. The bottom chart tracks the number of unique readers each calendar month. Both have grown encouragingly in 2024. The blue lines are the moving averages. In both cases we ended the year with the blue line at a record high.
In 2023, the reader-focus of the major stories were on the Savings aspects. In 2024 this shifted to a focus on Borrowing aspects.
In 2024, we delivered 27.5 mln pages of content (stories, and resource pages). That was up from 25.6 mln in 2023 – and was like having an extra month’s worth of content consumed.
We think we engage at least 2.5 million different people at least once in the year. That is because we recorded 4.1 mln “active users” in 2024. But many of them would have read us on different devices, multiple devices, so getting “active users” back to “unique people” is always going to be something of a guess. (Others pretend there is science to this, but those processes remain just 'estimates'.)
But we can record average session time. And that shows a high average, and a growing one. In 2023 the average session time was 3:56 mm:ss which we were proud of. In 2024 that rose to 4:37 mm:ss, which is a very heartening shift. And that is just the overall average.
Our mobile:desktop ratio rose to 60% : 40% from 55% : 45% in 2023.
Our gender balance stayed similar at 45% : 55% F:M.
Demographic records show little change there too, with 44% of readers 45yr and younger.
The news story read the most was one read 207,000 times.
But this was just the tip of a swelling catalog of well-read stories.
In 2023 we had 97 stories read between 10,000 and 15,000 times. In 2024 that rose to 107 stories.
In 2023 we had 23 stories read between 16,000 and 19,000 times. In 2024 that rose to 39 stories.
In 2023 we had 11 stories read between 20,000 and 29,000 times. In 2024 that rose to 41 stories.
In 2023 we had 3 stories read more than 30,000 times. In 2024 that rose to 22 stories.
And of course our data resource pages were read very heavily too. Most of the key ones were read more than 1 million times each in 2024.
2024 Projects
We completed some improvements in 2024 that will be important for years to come. We re-established some excellent insurance and climate change content, and added a Technology section. In the background we made some major upgrades to our Drupal CMS, and we developed a way to track the commission earned by the mortgage broking industry. There were a number of smaller improvements too. All contributed to the growing readership and engagement.
2025 Projects
At our end-of-year function we outlined a larger set of projects for 2025. But we will announce them when each is ready to launch.
One thing that won't change is our open and free access to almost all our content. We have no intention to add a paywall.
But all this is only made possible by the combination of judicious advertising, data sales, and readers support. And the most important one is readers support. We know readers like our content. We have GoogleAnalytics running live on our office wall, so we can stay abreast of engagement trends. But only a small fraction of our readers support us. They are crucial, and we would love it if you can join them. You can do so here.
There are direct benefits for doing so. You can choose an ad-free experience. And from March 1, you can continue to receive our daily and weekly newsletters right into your inbox. And you will still be able to comment after March 1 if you are a qualified Supporter.
Happy holidays to all our readers, Supporters or otherwise.
We will continue to update our content and articles over the summer break, and will return in full mid-January.
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