UKOM comScore MMX – December 2015
Despite many recognisable online brands seeing a fall in activity, the UK’s total online audience remained solid in December, with data recently released by comScore revealing that a total of 45.8 million users accessed the internet over the month through PCs or laptops.
The desktop-only online audience has stayed consistent since October 2015, with a slight month on month rise of 0.8% (translating to 650,000 users) resulting in the current total for the past few months.
Those living in a two-person home accounted for the biggest group of users when broken down by household size, translating to 14.3 million users or 31.3% of the total online population.
Homes with four members was the second biggest online group, accounting for 10.3 million users (22.4%) while users living on their own made up the smallest demographic, making up 10.6% of the month’s total (4.8 million users).
Most popular newspaper brands
All of the 10 most popular newspaper brands saw a noticeable drop in activity throughout December, a pattern typically scene for these particular type of sites.
Telegraph Media Group took the hardest hit and while 7.8 million users accessed the site in December, it was down -18% month on month – a fall of 1.7 million users.
Mail Online maintained its position as the most popular online newspaper brand for UK users with 10.5 million users, despite a loss of nearly 1 million visitors (-8.3%).
The Sun Online was the least affected newsbrand in the top 10, only losing 31,000 users (-1.2%) over the month. In total, 2.5 million users visited the conservative tabloid site in December, reaching 5.4% of all those online in the UK.
| UK rank | Site | Dec-15 | Nov-15 | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 44 | Mail Online / Daily Mail | 10,511,000 | 11,462,000 | -951,000 | -8.3 |
| 66 | The Guardian | 7,929,000 | 9,270,000 | -1,341,000 | -14.5 |
| 70 | Telegraph Media Group | 7,777,000 | 9,463,000 | -1,686,000 | -17.8 |
| 113 | Independent & Evening Standard (ESi Media) | 5,439,000 | 6,484,000 | -1,045,000 | -16.1 |
| 143 | Mirror Online | 4,830,000 | 5,642,000 | -812,000 | -14.4 |
| 155 | USA Today Network | 4,656,000 | 4,923,000 | -267,000 | -5.4 |
| 215 | Newsquest Media Group | 3,468,000 | 3,615,000 | -147,000 | -4.1 |
| 274 | Johnston Press Plc | 2,938,000 | 3,038,000 | -100,000 | -3.3 |
| 283 | Local World Sites | 2,851,000 | 3,201,000 | -350,000 | -10.9 |
| 346 | The Sun Online | 2,458,000 | 2,489,000 | -31,000 | -1.2 |
Top retail properties
Despite the consumer frenzy brought on by the festive period not all of the top 10 retail properties reported good news in December, with eBay seeing a surprising drop.
Perhaps users were more attracted to traditional digital retailers when purchasing essential Christmas gifts for friends and family, as the online auction brand took a -5% hit in December. This represented a significant loss of 1.1 million users, although a total of 18.9 million ensured that eBay remained firmly in second place.
Once again taking the top spot was the collection of Amazon Sites which managed to grow by a minute 1.1% over the period.
A total of 25.5 million people accessed the retail giant from desktop based-browsers, accounting for 55.8% of those online, with each of those visitors spending an average of 49 minutes on the site in December.
The site of high street mainstay Marks&Spencer had the biggest month on month percentage increase, jumping up by 17.7%. While this translated to an additional 1 million users, the growth spurt helped the retailer move from an overall ranking of 119th place in November to 81st in December.
| UK rank | Site | Dec-15 | Nov-15 | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Amazon Sites | 25,518,000 | 25,228,000 | 290,000 | 1.1 |
| 19 | eBay | 18,875,000 | 19,994,000 | -1,119,000 | -5.6 |
| 36 | Home Retail Group | 12,209,000 | 11,954,000 | 255,000 | 2.1 |
| 50 | Tesco Stores | 9,930,000 | 10,074,000 | -144,000 | -1.4 |
| 81 | Marks&Spencer | 6,623,000 | 5,628,000 | 995,000 | 17.7 |
| 92 | Dixons Retail Plc. | 6,370,000 | 6,137,000 | 233,000 | 3.8 |
| 96 | John Lewis Partnership | 6,215,000 | 6,215,000 | n/a | n/a |
| 115 | Wal-Mart | 5,406,000 | 5,435,000 | -29,000 | -0.5 |
| 154 | NEXT Group | 4,675,000 | 4,272,000 | 403,000 | 9.4 |
| 168 | Boots Plc | 4,363,000 | 3,820,000 | 543,000 | 14.2 |
Further breakdowns and reports can found in Mediatel’s Online database.
comScore is the industry’s leading online media planning solution and is endorsed by UKOM as the UK standard for online audience measurement. To learn more about services and to gain access to the full set of data, please click here to contact comScore.