The new Ipsos-IAB truth: Time spent online drops 12% in February; KFC wings it to longest user time as social networking, search pip news, entertainment, technology, retail & commerce and fast food for audience bulk - just

News 21 Mar 2023 - 3 min read

The new Ipsos-IAB truth: Time spent online drops 12% in February; KFC wings it to longest user time as social networking, search pip news, entertainment, technology, retail & commerce and fast food for audience bulk - just

By Staff writer

Flying high: KFC delivered an eyebrow-raising 54.5 minutes average time per user in the new IAB-backed Ipsos-Iris content measurement data for February – outstripping news publishers and rival fast food operators by up to 100 per cent.

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Tags: Ipsos iris online rankings

The IAB's new digital content measurement partner, Ipsos Iris, released some topline online usage data for February as publishers and media agencies begin testing the new currency and decide whether they sign-up exclusively to the Ipsos service or double their subscription fees and keep Nielsen's rival product on the books. News Corp yesterday was chipper at its D:Coded event about the dominance of news.com.au in the Ipsos-Iris audience rankings for the news category (12.7 million users) but all eyes should be on KFC in Fast Food & Delivery – a lot of folks are chasing chook for remarkably long periods.

Chicken run

The first data from the new IAB Australia endorsed Ipsos Iris measurement service confirms social media and search remained the two most popular reasons Australians went online in February (20.9 million users each), marginally ahead of technology sites (20.8 million), retail & commerce (20.6 million), entertainment (20.5 million) and news sites with 20.3 million users.

But its appears Team Kentucky Fried Chicken rules the roost for time spent on site and in-app for any of the brands in the limited data publicly released by Ipsos. KFC's audience was down 9.7 per cent in February to 3.47 million users but average time on its apps and website was a whopping 54.5 minutes. That is an eyebrow raising 45 minutes more under the new currency than the home of the Whopper at Hungry Jacks, which attracted 9.2 minutes of user time in February off an audience lift of 10.4 per cent to 2.84 million users. The top ranked Maccas was 40 mins behind its fried chicken rival on time spent with user numbers of 6.3 million, up 2.3 per cent for February.

In the news category, news.com.au landed closest to the KFC juggernaut for time spent at 31.4 minutes per user, nearly 25 minutes less than the chook magnet.

While all news sites in the top 10 declined in audience numbers in February besides a 1.4 per cent gain to nine.com.au on 10.5 million users and a 2.2 per cent lift to The Daily Mail on 8.04 million, there was a 0.2 per cent increase in users overall for the news category which appears to have been driven by smaller publishers outside the publisher top 10.

Conversely, there was some hunger hotspots in fast food despite the overall category down slightly on user growth in February at -0.3 per cent. Only KFC with a 9.7 per cent drop in users to 3.47 million and Domino's with a 16.9 per cent fall in users to 3.03 million posted declines, albeit somewhat large. The biggest audience growth went to Grill'd (up 56.1 per cent to 896,000 users), Pizza Hut (up 30.8 per cent to 939,000 users) and HelloFresh (up 24.3 per cent to 1.42 million). But no-one can fly as high as KFC on the time its users spend digitally with its apps and website.

More broadly, the February Ipsos data found that Australians spent an average of 3.5 hours per day, or 94 hours a month online on a PC/laptop, smartphone, or tablet device, which was a decline of 12 per cent from January.

Among the other insights from the data;

McDonalds, Uber Eats and KFC are the most popular online food choices.
The eponymous News, Nine, and Seven news sites dominate the top ten.
Overall, people aged 25-39 were the largest cohort online in the country.
But people aged between 55-64 spent the most time online in February.

General news is the most popular news sub-category reaching 19.1 million Australians in February and weather had the highest time spent with almost 3 hours per person. The reporting of news brands also includes the audience of publisher content distributed on platforms such as Apple News, Facebook and GoogleAMP.