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April 19, 2018

Sun is most-read UK newsbrand and dominates on mobile but Guardian top on desktop, new readership figures show

By Freddy Mayhew

The Sun is the most read newsbrand in the UK, figures from the UK’s new readership measurement standard for the news publishing industry have shown.

Britain’s best-selling newspaper has the highest “total brand reach” at 33.3m monthly readers (including the Sun on Sunday), according to data from the Published Audience Measurement Company.

Pamco has replaced the National Readership Survey and is able to offer publishers greater insight into their digital audiences across all platforms.

See full Pamco figures below

Close behind the Sun titles is the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday with a total brand reach of 31.2m monthly readers combined.

Within each audience category – print, phone (mobile), tablet and desktop – The Sun dominates on mobile with 23.8m readers a month. But, it is the Mail titles that lead on tablet, with 4.8m readers a month.

On desktop, the Guardian titles are the most read, with 8.7m readers a month, while in print the free Metro newspaper is the most read with a reach of 10.5m readers a month.

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Among paid-for print titles, Scottish newspaper The National has the highest reach, followed by The Sun.

By category, print has the highest total monthly reach across all newsbrands included in the survey at 71.9m.

But, when combined, digital reaches well over 200m readers a month. Tablet has the smallest total monthly reach at 30.4m readers.

According to Pamco, 41.3m people read newsbrands every week.

Pamco monthly reach for 2017 (including Comscore data from November) in millions:

Newsbrand Total Brand Reach Phone (mobile) Tablet Desktop Print
Sun + Sun on Sunday 33,322 23,862 4,269 4,556 9,860
Daily Mail + Mail on Sunday 31,215 19,760 4,882 6,626 8,966
Daily Mirror + Sunday Mirror + Sunday People 27,122 19,001 3,587 3,858 5,612
Guardian + The Observer 24,823 15,969 3,265 8,728 4,255
Telegraph + Sunday Telegraph 23,692 14,674 3,526 7,087 3,893
Metro 20,749 11,229 1,349 2,420 10,518
The Independent 20,532 14,849 2,949 5,282 0
Daily Express + Sunday Express 13,939 6,459 2,735 4,283 2,822
Evening Standard 13,535 8,357 1,196 2,196 4,859
The National 10,042 0 0 0 10,042
The Times + The Sunday Times 8,123 2,556 512 1,236 5,417
Daily Star + Daily Star Sunday 7,341 3,450 967 1,188 2,447
Daily Record + Sunday Mail 5,588 4,033 532 490 1,147
The Scotsman + Scotland on Sunday 1,936 1,117 264 421 342
The Herald 1,496 831 146 325 399
The Yorkshire Post 1,138 571 112 209 330
Sunday Post 717 113 26 45 554
The Courier (Dundee) 662 324 54 111 254
The Press and Journal 568 252 48 85 230
Total: 147,407 30,419 49,146 71,947

Picture: Reuters/Peter Nicholls

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