- Digital daily readership across national news brands up by 35%
- National combined daily readership (print and digital) surpasses 30 million for first time
- UK news brand sector* now reaches 49 million people a month, 48 million a week and 40 million people a day
National news consumption has soared to a record high with an extra 6.6 million daily digital readers according to the latest data released by PAMCo.
More than 25 million people are now turning to digital national news brands every single day following a surge of 6.6 million readers, or 35%, compared to the previous year (April – March 2019 v April – March 2020).
The numbers, which include the first three months of the year when the global coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, show an increase in overall audience numbers across all metrics with an especially sharp rise in daily readership.
Across print and digital, national news readership grew by 18% to surpass 30 million daily readers for the first time. The data also shows that monthly and weekly national readership grew to 48 million and 45 million, respectively.
When combined with the UK’s leading regional titles across both print and digital those numbers rise to 49 million monthly, 48 weekly and 40 million daily readers – an extra 7.4 million readers across the news sector* are turning to trusted news brands every single day.
To put that 40 million daily readership figure in perspective that’s 15 million more daily unique visitors than Google and 7.5 million ahead of Facebook.
Tracy De Groose, executive chair of Newsworks, said: “As the global pandemic took hold at the beginning of the year millions more readers turned to sources of news, analysis and information they knew they could trust. And encouragingly for our news brands and our journalism this was at a more frequent rate than ever before. All the indications suggest that this more regular daily demand for high quality journalism has continued into the second quarter of the year.”
PAMCo 2 2020
| Monthly (000s) | YoY change | Weekly (000s) | YoY change | Daily (000s) | YoY change | ||||
| % | (000s) | % | (000s) | % | (000s) | ||||
| News Sector* | 49,187 | 2% | 1024 | 48,014 | 7% | 2998 | 39,614 | 23% | 7410 |
| National Newsbrands | 47,562 | 7% | 2915 | 44,989 | 10% | 4013 | 30,708 | 18% | 4592 |
| National news brands Digital | 42,387 | 14% | 5295 | 39,654 | 21% | 6820 | 25,213 | 35% | 6594 |
| National news brands Print | 24,344 | -7% | -1891 | 19,598 | -9% | -1878 | 10,278 | -11% | -1215 |
| The Ozone Project (2nd PAMCO data release) | 42,141 | 37,185 | 25,059 | ||||||
| Facebook (inc. whatsapp, facebook, instagram) | 43,961 | 4% | 1593 | 41,456 | 5% | 2153 | 32,173 | 9% | 2626 |
| 39,495 | -2% | -964 | 34,685 | -5% | -1946 | 25,449 | 3% | 738 |
Notes to editors
News sector*: Daily Star, Evening Standard, Daily Express, i, The Independent, Daily Mail, Metro, Daily Mirror, The Sun, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Sunday People, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, Observer, Sunday Express, Sun on Sunday, Daily Star Sunday, Sunday Mirror, Mail on Sunday, The Herald, The Scotsman, Yorkshire Post, Daily Record, Birmingham Mail, Bristol Post, Burton Mail, Cambridge Evening News, Coventry Telegraph, Daily Post, Derby Telegraph, Grimsby Telegraph, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Hull Daily Mail, Leicester Mercury, Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News, Newcastle Journal, Nottingham Post, Shropshire Star, South Wales Echo, South Wales Evening Post, Stoke The Sentinel, The Chronicle, The Gazette, The Herald, Western Mail, West Midlands Express & Star, Western Daily Press & Western Morning News, Lancashire Evening Post, The Daily Echo – Bournemouth, The Star (Sheffield, Doncaster), Portsmouth News and Sports, Oxford Mail, Southern Daily Echo, Swindon Advertiser, The Argus – Brighton and York – The Press.
About PAMCo: The Publishers Audience Measurement Company (PAMCo), is the governing body which oversees audience measurement for the published media industry. We are responsible for the new joint industry currency (JIC) called PAMCo – Audience Measurement for Publishers in place of NRS data. For more information: https://pamco.co.uk/
For more information:
Rupert Smith: 07786 665266 / [email protected]
