Stuff audience soars as Delta arrives

AUCKLAND, Friday: Stuff’s unfolding news coverage of the Delta outbreak has delivered two good days for the site – with the average daily audience surging to 2.11 million unique browsers.

The spike follows Tuesday’s announcement that the Covid-19 Delta variant had reached the community.

Stuff ed Patrick Crewdson said: “It shows Kiwis’ appetite for trustworthy, accurate, timely news in these extraordinary times is right up there with the demand for toilet paper and flour.

“Our busiest days ever were the Kaikōura earthquake, the Christchurch mosque attacks, and last year’s level 4 lockdown announcement.”

Stuff’s unique daily browsers increased by two-thirds across the two days – an extra 820,000 visitors. This included an additional 270,000 people accessing Stuff via their desktops and a further 526,000 than usual visiting the site on their mobile devices.

Traffic reports show peaks at 9am and again 1pm, coinciding with the daily Covid-19 press conference, which was streamed live on Stuff. The top stories were all Covid-related.

Patrick Crewdson: “Our busiest days ever were the Kaikōura earthquake, the Christchurch mosque terror attacks, and last year’s level 4 lockdown announcement.”