Mirror Digital Group and the Independent online were the only online news platforms to see any growth over the festive period, while the MailOnline dropped by over half a million daily browsers.
Last week, it was announced that the Lebedevs are looking for a buyer for the Independent and its sister titles, in a bid to “offload loss-making papers that they see no prospect of turning into profit.”
While all three print titles currently make a loss estimated at £10 million a year, the newsbrand’s online counterpart saw a 5.5% increase in average daily browsers over December, adding an extra 70,000 to take its total to almost 1.4 million.
Up 8.6% in December 2013, Mirror Digital Group secured an average of just over 2 million visitors a day, up 160,500 on November and seeing the biggest increase of all the titles.
The MailOnline suffered the biggest hit over the month, down -5.7% and losing an average of almost 600,000 visitors to the site each day, however the newsbrand’s website still sits comfortably at the top of the table with a daily average of almost 10 million visitors.
Over the same period the Telegraph online and guardian.co.uk were down -2.7% and -2%, respectively.
| Site | Dec 13 Daily Average Unique Browsers | Nov 13 Daily Average Unique Browsers | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailOnline | 9,810,129 | 10,403,485 | -593,356 | -5.7 |
| guardian.co.uk | 4,595,213 | 4,686,914 | -91,701 | -2.0 |
| Telegraph | 2,951,609 | 3,033,924 | -82,315 | -2.7 |
| Mirror Group Digital | 2,023,770 | 1,863,344 | 160,426 | 8.6 |
| The Independent | 1,355,770 | 1,285,674 | 70,096 | 5.5 |
Source: ABC
