NRS PADD: Magazines see mobile and tablet readership growth

The latest findings from NRS PADD, which cover the period January to December 2014, continue to paint a healthy picture for magazines, with mobile and tablet – including both websites and apps – increasing readership by an average of 20.7% across all titles.

The third wave of mobile and tablet estimates, published alongside the quarterly print and PC results, reveal how the OK!’s readership is now more than 5.1 million – with mobile accounting for a 14% increase.

Cosmopolitan also looked strong, with the addition of mobile and tablet data increasing readership by more than 31%. Combined with print and PC, it reflects the true reach of the brand which now records a readership figure of 2.4 million each month – with 759,000 coming from mobile/tablet devices.

As reflected in the second set of data, the BBC Good Food magazine and website sees huge gains when the mobile and tablet data is included, increasing readership by almost 67% to secure a little over 6.6 million readers each month.

There was a similar story for Time Out – which has now launched in six cities outside of London – which saw mobile increase readership 33% to secure more than 3.75 million readers.

What Car? magazine, with mobile increasing readership 23.3%, recorded a total readership figure across all platforms of almost 1.9 million.

Few titles record a mobile audience increase figure of less than 10%, however, New Scientist, despite reporting on cutting-edge technology, sees only a 3.4% increase when mobile devices are included. Likewise, National Geographic sees mobile increase its readership by 8.8%.

Overall, mobile and tablet readership is seeing slight growth across the entire market, but magazine brands are all taking wildly different approaches to emerging platforms.

Since its launch in September 2012, NRS PADD has been providing estimates of the combined reach of print and PC websites based on a fusion of NRS and comScore data.

The new mobile and tablet estimates have been added to this dataset, with additional titles being included in future releases subject to sample sizes and approval.