News brand and magazine monthly reach shows marginal dip
Total monthly market reach for UK news brands fell 1.27% year on year to 45.6m, according to the latest figures from Pamco.
Magazine reach fell 2.54% year on year to 38.3m.
Overall total market reach for print and digital publishing brands was practically flat year on year (-0.28%) to 48.7m, suggesting resilience in consumer interest in publisher brands despite long-standing declines in overall print consumption.
It is worth noting that, while Pamco’s methodology has stayed consistent over the past two years, the number of publisher brands included in the data has varied since H1 2023, with four fewer digital brands and one fewer print brand tracked between then and H1 2025.
According to last month’s Consumer ABC data, magazine brands generally saw overall circulation declines, although a number of titles performed especially strong in terms of digital growth.
The latest Pamco figures are released amid a growing effort among some agency leaders to support publishers, particularly news brands. Challenger holding group Stagwell has set out to produce research proving the effectiveness of advertising against news, arguing that premium titles attract unique audiences that are valuable to businesses and hard to reach on other media channels.
Barb tie-up official
Pamco has not publicly released reach figures for specific publisher brands since 2020, although its subscribers are able to access the data via its website, Adwanted Connected (Adwanted is the parent of The Media Leader) and Bureaux.
Since 2021, the publishing joint industry currency (JIC) has fused its print data with Ipsos Iris online data to give advertisers a more accurate sense of publishing brand reach.
The JIC has been undergoing a review process of its measurement strategy since last year, with the goal of delivering an “evolved measurement system” in time for the next Pamco release, slated for September.
Last year, The Media Leader reported Pamco was trialling shared data collection with TV JIC Barb, with 15,000 participants of Barb’s Establishment Survey of 53,000 households asked to complete a short readership survey on behalf of Pamco.
Emma Holden, Pamco’s managing director, described the pilot as “successful” and said it will now officially partner Barb as part of a two-year collaboration. Ipsos has also been retained as an audience measurement partner for an additional two years.
The Pamco questionnaire will continue to feed into UKOM, TGI and IPA TouchPoints while integrating digital readership via Ipsos Iris.
Holden said such an approach “aims to drive sector revenue growth using trusted JIC measurement standards”.