Stuff reach, engagement surge as interaction tools drive news audiences

As election year heats up, the country's largest digital news site stuff.co.nz has grown the gap on its nearest competitor, with 354,000 more Kiwis choosing Stuff in July than any other news site.

Latest Nielsen* figures show 2.2m New Zealanders visited stuff.co.nz last month, a 3.1% increase since May. And engagement on the site has grown exponentially over that period, with unprecedented audience participation through voting, polling and commenting.

On Wednesday August 12 as the National Party caucus attempted a coup at the Beehive, more than 100,000 New Zealanders voted on Stuff on whether PM Christopher Luxon would be rolled or not, and what they made of his extraordinary press conference.

Stuff Digital Editor-in-Chief Keith Lynch said the mood of the nation closely followed the MPs themselves: "In the morning, most people thought he would be gone, but by lunchtime and before the MPs emerged, the needle had swung right back towards staying.

"Kiwis love to share how they're feeling about the news - at one stage on Wednesday the comments section crashed under the weight of the views, but more than 2000 were still published by day's end on the live blog alone."

The Stuff Needle poll, which debuted in July, has already received more than a million votes on topics from politics to consumer affairs. A new All Blacks player ratings tool receives thousands of votes per player, with punters able to see how their ratings compared to the rest of New Zealand. And Stuff's new HealthStuff and MoneyStuff verticals have built instant audiences using comparison tools from national surveys.

Lynch says the old days of only broadcasting the news to audiences has gone - participation is critical and key to the scale audience that stuff.co.nz has long enjoyed.

"That consistent engagement shows Stuff is worthy of our audience's time, that we are trustworthy when the big news happens," he says. "You can't have trust by default - ours is demonstrated by the 2.2 million New Zealanders who come to Stuff each month, visit more often, stay for longer and tell us what they think."

Stuff Digital Managing Director Nigel Tutt says advertisers increasingly see quality audience engagement as critical to connection with their customers.

"Highly engaged audiences don't just spend longer with the journalism, they pay more attention to the advertising around it," he says. "Research shows that ads in engaging, trustworthy news environments are more likely to be seen, remembered and acted upon than ads encountered during a passive or fast-scrolling experience."