Women give Fairfax new advertising network

It is an attempt to better compete in an increasingly hard-fought market for the attention of the gender in control of most household spending.

The trans-Tasman publisher, including of the Herald, launched its Fairfax Women's Network to reach women aged 20 to 50 through websites such as Essential Baby, Life & Style, Cuisine, RSVP, and Find a Babysitter, and its newspaper magazine in NSW and Victoria, Sunday Life.

Fairfax says 70 per cent of the group's audience is female, with a monthly audience of 2.75 million. It said the "highly valuable" demographic of women were now the "digital mainstream".

The digital publisher of its metropolitan division, Jane Huxley, said: "We know there are more women than men online, and as an audience they are moving online at almost double the rate of men."

She said female-focused sectors such as retail, groceries and health, beauty and pharmaceuticals were seeing much higher online growth rates than telecommunications and finance, which were early movers to digital advertising. "They are now seeing the power of engaging a woman online through her social network, at her stage in life and around something she feels passionate about," Ms Huxley said.

The moves comes after rival News Ltd bought Katie May's KidSpot website for a reported $45 million in June, a purchase which includes the advertising portfolio SheSpot, covering sites such as Weight Watchers and Mia Freedman's Mamamia.