Analysis
The Sun and The Daily Mail have the highest combined monthly print and digital reach across the UK, according to the latest data from Pamco, with both titles hovering at 23.2m.
For the past few years, Pamco has released only total market data covering the reach of all newspaper and magazine titles.
The Media Leader found that data relating to individual brands is now available. While this means comparisons cannot be drawn about individual titles’ performance across time, it does offer a snapshot of the current state of news brands’ print and digital reach.
The latest data covers December 2021 to December 2023 for print data, with November 2023 Ipsos Iris digital data.
Titles that are free to access digitally, such as tabloids including The Sun and Daily Mail, as well as The Guardian and digital-only Independent, unsurprisingly maintain higher reach than subscription-based titles with paywalls.
The Guardian leads all titles considered “wualities” by Pamco in terms of reach, at a total of 20.6m (2.4m print), followed by The Independent (21.6m).
While The Daily Telegraph (13.7m) maintains a higher total monthly reach than The Times (10.8m), the latter notably still retains greater monthly print reach (2.6m versus 1.9m for The Telegraph). The Times originally surpassed The Telegraph in total print circulation in January 2018 and has continued to outperform its rival in print.
Comparing freesheet tabloids, Metro leads the pack with total monthly reach of 14.3m (5.3m in print). Dom Williams, Mail Metro Media’s commercial chief, previously told The Media Leader that its daily circulation has settled at around 1m.
Metro is followed by the Daily Express (total monthly reach: 12.4m) and the Evening Standard (10.1m).
A spokesperson for Newsworks declined to comment on any individual performance, but highlighted that total market data released by Pamco “shows news brand consumption is predominantly driven online”, particularly through mobile readership.
In total, digital news brands now reach 40m monthly and news brands collectively added over 500,000 daily mobile readers since Pamco last released data in September 2023 to reach 17m total mobile readers.
“News brands also continue to perform strongly against social media platforms among young people,” the Newsworks spokesperson added. “Nine million (61%) 18-34s consume news brands weekly — more than those that visit TikTok (7m), Snapchat (6m) or X (5m) in the same time frame.”
Overall, news brands now reach 85% of the total UK population, including 38% via print and 75% via total digital.
Consumer ABCs 2023: Magazine circulations trend downwards despite growth in some titles
