The Independent was the UK’s biggest commercial news website by audience size for the first time in November, according to the latest data from Ipsos iris.
The title overtook The Guardian to take second place in our top-50 monthly audience ranking of the UK’s news websites for November. However, in terms of engagement (time spent with the title) it ranks only 14th in the UK.
See our monthly rankings for the top 50 most popular news websites in the world and in the US.
The Independent had an audience of 19.6 million in November, behind the BBC on 38.8 million and ahead of The Guardian on 19.4 million. The BBC’s audience figures include its entertainment output, not just its news site.
Completing the top five were The Sun (18.8 million) and the Mirror (18.4 million) with Mail Online falling just outside in sixth place with 18.2 million.
All of the top five commercial news providers saw a drop in their audience compared to November 2023, although the BBC was up 3% year-on-year. The biggest declines were at Mail Online (down 22%) and The Sun (down 20%).
The Independent ranked 14th for total minutes spent with its content across November (145.7 million) and 17th for average minutes per person (7.43).
The top three websites for two key engagement metrics were BBC (8.9 billion minutes and 2.9 billion page views), aggregator Yahoo! (1.9 billion minutes and 1.2 billion page views) and Mail Online (1.4 billion and 481.9 million respectively).
The biggest growth in time spent was at Which? (up 42% month-on-month to 30.2 million minutes) and Surrey Live (up 259% year-on-year to 5.8 million minutes) – a Reach regional website that also saw a massive jump in audience in the past year, up 345% to 4.5 million people. However Surrey Live’s average minutes spent per user dropped in the year, from 1.58 to 1.3.
The largest drops in time spent were at fellow Reach regional Lancs Live (down 32% month-on-month to 2.7 million minutes spent) and Reach national the Daily Star (down 53% year-on-year to 10.9 million minutes).
Fourteen (or 28%) of the top 50 saw growth in their time spent metric in November compared to the month before, while just under half (22) grew compared to a year earlier.
There was a higher level of growth when looking at the websites’ audience size: 29 of the 50 grew month-on-month, and 25 were up year-on-year.
Other than Surrey Live, the biggest year-on-year audience growth was at Nottinghamshire Live (up 81% to 4.7 million). Forbes (up 63% to 6.1 million) was the only non-Reach regional to be in the top five for annual growth for the second month in a row.
Month-on-month, Nottinghamshire Live was the only site with growth of more than a quarter (up 38%).
The Ipsos iris data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
Ipsos iris replaced Comscore as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage. This is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.
October 2024
The Sun fell out of the top five biggest news websites in the UK in October, according to the latest data from Ipsos iris.
The News UK tabloid, which had frequently been in second place behind the BBC until recent months, has dropped to sixth place with an audience of 18.4 million.
The Sun’s monthly audience fell by 22% year-on-year in October and, although it saw growth compared to September as did the rest of the top ten, it saw the smallest rise of 0.5%.
The top three news sites in October were the BBC (38.2 million), The Guardian (19.8 million) and The Independent (19.4 million).
Mail Online (18.9 million) and Sky News (18.5 million) made up the rest of the top five.
The biggest month-on-month growth in the top ten was at Sky News (up 14%) while Yahoo! saw the highest increase on an annual basis (up 26% to 16.9 million).
The fact that all ten sites grew month-on-month in October was a stark contrast to the previous month when they all fell compared to August.
The biggest decline among the top ten sites was at Mail Online, down 24% year-on-year.
To create this list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content of any genre.
Among the whole top 50, Reach regional Surrey Live saw a massive jump both month-on-month (up 263%) and year-on-year (up 351%) to an audience of 4.5 million (compared to a county population of around 1.2 million).
There were four Reach regional sites in both the top ten sites for month-on-month and year-on-year growth.
The top month-on-month list also featured Bristol Live (up 41% month-on-month to 3.9 million), Nottinghamshire Live (up 41% to 3.4 million) and Lancs Live (up 23% to 4.1 million).
Year-on-year Devon Live grew by 78% to 3.4 million, Lancs Live was up 70% and Gloucestershire Live was up 54% to 3.6 million.
Reach audience director (distribution and customer marketing) Martin Little told Press Gazette last month Google Discover has become its “biggest referrer of traffic” and that almost half of all of its websites are in year-on-year growth partly due to Google changes.
All but seven of the top 50 sites grew month-on-month, although more than half (30) declined compared to October 2023.
The biggest drops were at Business Insider (down 13% month-on-month to 3.1 million) and the Daily Star (down 62% year-on-year to 3.2 million).
Looking at engagement metrics, Yahoo! crossed the two billion total minutes mark with 12% growth both month-on-month and year-on-year.
The Telegraph saw strong growth (up 10% month-on-month and 42% year-on-year) to become the fourth biggest site by total monthly minutes (844.6 million) behind the BBC (8.8 billion), Yahoo! and Mail Online (1.5 billion).
Thirty-two of the sites saw a drop in minutes spent compared to October 2023, although just ten were down compared to September. The biggest drops were at Business Insider (down 22% month-on-month) and the Daily Star (down 53% year-on-year).
September 2024
More than three-quarters of the 50 biggest news websites in the UK saw their audiences fall in September compared to August.
The biggest month-on-month audience declines in September were at three national news websites: the Daily Star (3.1 million, down 28%), the i (6.8 million, down 23%) and Sky News (16.3 million, down 20%) according to the latest data from Ipsos iris.
The four websites to see the biggest year-on-year drops are all owned by Reach: the Daily Star was down 60%, followed by Bristol Live (2.8 million, down 41%), Liverpool Echo (5.3 million, down 32%) and Yorkshire’s Examiner Live (3.2 million, down 30%).
However the biggest month-on-month growth was at two Reach regional sites: Lancs Live (3.4 million, up 25%) and Devon Live (3.3 million, up 17%) followed by politics site Joe (3.6 million, up 14%).
And year-on-year, Reach regional Gloucestershire Live (3.3 million, up 91%) this month saw the third biggest growth behind Joe (3.4 million, up 289%) and Forbes (7.3 million, up 105%).
The Sun, which has spent most of the past year as the biggest commercial news website in the UK by audience size, had fallen behind both The Guardian and Mail Online for September’s ranking.
It was initially nudged out of second place in August by The Guardian, but was in September also narrowly overtaken by Mail Online.
In September The Guardian remained the second-biggest news website behind the BBC (whose figures also include its entertainment offering).
Mail Online (18,322,504), The Sun (18,320,269) and The Independent (18,260,316) sat close together in third, fourth and fifth place respectively.
Sky News fell down the ranking to become the eighth biggest news website in the UK, just two months after leaping up to third place. In September it had an audience of 16.3 million, down 20% month-on-month and 9% year-on-year.
The Manchester Evening News (10.4 million, down 1% month-on-month) overtook fellow Reach site Birmingham Live (10.3 million, down 4%) to retake the spot of the biggest regional news website in the UK.
Looking at engagement, Channel 4 saw strong growth in total minutes spent both month-on-month (up 41%) and year-on-year (63%) – although its figures, like the BBC and ITV, include its entertainment offering and not just news. Users spent 656.6 million minutes with Channel 4 online in September.
On the other end of the spectrum, Bristol Live’s minutes were down 29% month-on-month and 53% year-on-year to 5.3 million.
The top three sites for both total minutes spent and page views were again the BBC, Yahoo! and Mail Online. The Sun was fourth for page views (213.5 million) but eleventh by minutes (277.8 million).
August 2024
The Guardian was the biggest commercial news website in the UK in August, overtaking the likes of The Sun and Mail Online in Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
The Guardian had an audience of 21.8 million people in the UK in August, according to Ipsos iris data analysed by Press Gazette. This was a slight dip since July of 1% but year-on-year growth of 1%.
The Guardian has frequently sat in around fifth place in our monthly ranking, behind the BBC, The Sun, Mail Online and the Mirror. It has also at times been overtaken by Sky News or The Independent.
Nine of the ten biggest news websites in the UK in August saw month-on-month decline after a busy news month in July that included the UK election results and new Labour government, a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport that led to days of rioting across England, Joe Biden stepping down from the US presidential race, and an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
The only top-ten news website that grew between July and August was Yahoo!, up 4% to an audience of 17 million in August.
Six of the ten biggest news websites did see their audience grow compared to August 2023.
But The Sun and Mail Online, which have traditionally battled it out as the biggest non-BBC news website in the UK, both saw decline.
The Sun was down 10% month-on-month and 7% year-on-year to 21.3 million while Mail Online was down 5% and 9% respectively to 21.1 million.
Three other news websites were close behind including Sky News which in July leaped from sixth to third place in our monthly ranking. In August the broadcaster's website was down 10% month-on-month but up 15% compared to last August, reaching 20.5 million.
After Sky News was The Independent (20.5 million) and the Mirror (20 million).
Just ten news websites across the entire top 50 recorded growth between July and August.
The biggest growth was at Business Insider (shown in the data as Springer Insider) and politics site Joe, both up month-on-month 22.5% to 4.1 million and 2.9 million respectively.
The biggest month-on-month decline in August was at Reach regional Gloucestershire Live, down 26% to 3 million, followed by ITV, down 25% to 12.6 million.
However Gloucestershire Live continued a run of growth when compared to 2023, up 152% year-on-year. It was followed by Tech Radar (up 95% to 3.8 million) and Forbes (up 94% to 7.7 million).
Audiences once again spent the most time with the BBC (9.7 billion minutes) followed by Yahoo! (1.8 billion) and Mail Online (1.5 billion). The same trio was top for page views, on 2.9 billion, 1.2 billion and 546 million respectively.
July 2024
Sky News leaped up the ranking of the biggest news websites in the UK in July, moving from sixth to third place in Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
Sky News reported month-on-month growth of 10% and year-on-year growth of 22% for a monthly audience of 22.7 million people.
It was behind only the BBC (whose domain includes its entertainment content and not just news) on 40.3 million (up 3% month-on-month and 6% year-on-year) and The Sun on 23.7 million (up 1% compared to June and down 2% compared to July 2023).
Mail Online (22.2 million) returned to its former place ahead of the Mirror (22.1 million) after the Reach tabloid overtook it last month. They are now in fourth and fifth place respectively.
In a busy news month - July saw the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Joe Biden stepping down as presidential candidate, the UK general election, the end of the Euros and the start of the Olympics - 37 of the websites in our top 50 saw month-on-month growth, and 34 saw year-on-year growth.
Of the top ten biggest sites in July, six sites saw month-on-month growth and seven saw annual rises. Sky News and The Guardian (22 million) were both up 10% month-on-month, while on an annual basis The Telegraph led the way (18.3 million, up 32%).
Four of the top ten websites reported double-digit year-on-year growth, the same number as in June.
Conclusions should not be drawn regarding changes in places for publishers outside the top ten in this month’s list because Press Gazette has revised and slightly altered the websites included in the analysis.
To create this list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content of any genre.
The Ipsos iris data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
The biggest dips compared to the prior month were at Radio Times (5.8 million) and Reach regional website Gloucestershire Live (4 million), both down 8%.
Year-on-year, the top three audience declines were also Reach websites: Examiner Live (audience of 3.2 million, down 42%), Chronicle Live (3.6 million, down 25%) and the Daily Star (5.5 million, down 24%).
The biggest growth compared to June was at tech website Toms Guide (audience of 3.1 million, up 27%) and Reuters (4.3 million, up 24%).
Year-on-year, Gloucestershire was up 301% despite its more short-term dip. Forbes was up 129% to 7.5 million.
The Times and Sunday Times website (11.6 million) had a smaller audience in July than the Manchester Evening News (12.2 million), Birmingham Live (11.9 million) and Evening Standard (11.8 million) which were all smaller than the national brand in July 2023.
After a run of growth following its move to a .com website in March 2023, the GB News website (audience of 9.2 million) is now bigger than those of DMGT’s the i (9 million) or The New York Times (8.3 million).
Audiences spent the most time with the BBC (10.5 billion minutes) followed by Yahoo! (1.8 billion) and Mail Online (1.6 billion). The same trio was top for page views, on 3.2 billion, 1.3 billion and 574 million respectively.
The biggest month-on-month growth in minutes spent was at ITV (up 77% to 1.4 billion) followed by Hello! Magazine (up 20% to 42 million) and Unilad (up 18% to 5.7 million). The biggest drop was at CNN (down 26% to 15 million minutes).
Compared to July 2023, however, Unilad was down by three-quarters making it the biggest year-on-year drop. It was followed by Good Housekeeping (down 65% to 4.5 million) and the Daily Star (down 57% to 14.7 million).
Forbes almost doubled its monthly minutes in the past year, rising by 99% to 12.4 million in July. It was followed by Gloucestershire Live (up 85% to 6.7 million) and The New York Times (up 67% to 366 million minutes).
June 2024
The Mirror overtook Mail Online to become the UK’s third biggest newsbrand in June, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking.
Monthly audience to Reach-owned Mirror was up 2% month-on-month to 22.5 million, helping it edge past Mail Online (audience of 22.3 million, down 3%), which before this month regularly occupied a top three spot in our ranking.
The Mirror also saw a smaller year-on-year decline than Mail Online, with the monthly audience to the news sites down 1% and 9% respectively compared to June 2023. For the Mail this was the largest annual decline in the top ten sites.
Mail Online also saw a large drop for the second consecutive month for minutes spent, according to data from Ipsos iris - down 4% month-on-month and 29% year-on-year to 1.4 billion minutes - now the joint second highest total minutes alongside ITV which grew by 77% month-on-month and 39% year-on-year.
A statement shared with Press Gazette by Mail Online publisher DMG Media said: "The seriously popular Mail Online is now bigger than ever before - bringing in hundreds of millions of readers, viewers and listeners with its unique blend of addictive content.
"The brand remains the number one commercial publisher for engagement, with substantially more page views and time spent on the website and app than any of its competitors.
"This once again demonstrates our exceptionally loyal and engaged audience, who in turn have enabled us to successfully launch a subscription proposition in recent months.
"We are also dominating on Snapchat, Tiktok and Facebook, have a portfolio of award-winning podcasts and are releasing a new slate of original shows as we look to take Youtube by storm.
"The Mail has never had more users consuming its content across multiple platforms and looks forward to these significant milestones being recognised in future releases."
The BBC remained top of the table as the newsbrand with the largest monthly audience in the UK, followed by The Sun (audience of 23.5 million) in second place, the Mirror in third, Mail Online in fourth and The Independent (21.1 million) in fifth - with The Guardian knocked out of fifth place into seventh (audience of 20.1 million) also behind Sky News (20.6 million).
The Ipsos iris data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
By month-on-month growth, June was also a strong month for ITV (audience of 17 million, up 15% compared to May), The Telegraph (17.2 million, up 14%) and Sky News (up 4%), which were the three fastest-growing names among the top ten newsbrands by audience size. As a result, ITV, which re-entered the top ten newsbrands by size of monthly audience in May in tenth position, climbed a further place to ninth in June in a month of position shifts at the top.
Four top ten newsbrands by audience size saw double-digit year-on-year growth in June: Metro (audience of 15.9 million, up 22%), The Telegraph (up 18%), Sky News (up 12%) and ITV (up 10%). The BBC was the remaining top ten newsbrand to see year-on-year growth in June as its audience was up 4% to 39.1 million.
For Metro, Sky News and ITV, June follows a similarly strong year-on-year performance in May, while The Telegraph, which saw its audience fall last month, reversed its fortunes.
Among the wider top 50, Reach’s Gloucestershire Live was again the fastest-growing newsbrand year-on-year. Audience to Gloucestershire Live was up 356% to 4.4 million people, followed by Forbes (6.6 million, up 95%) and Screenrant (4 million, up 63%).
Month-on-month among the whole top 50, LBG Group’s Unilad grew fastest (4 million, up 19% compared to May), followed by ITV, The Telegraph and Time Out (4.4 million, up 10%).
Audiences spent most time with the BBC (9.2 billion minutes) while The Guardian fell from third place behind Mail Online into fourth (898.5 million minutes) due to ITV’s growth.
As well as Mail Online, its rival The Sun (348.4 million minutes, down 31%) and The Guardian (down 19%) both saw large year-on-year falls in minutes spent with their content.
In contrast, paywalled brands continued to demonstrate strong growth in time spent. Audiences spent 810.3 million minutes with The Telegraph (up 38% year-on-year, surpassing its 23% growth in May), 569.8 million with The Times (up 38%) and 365.8 million with The New York Times (up 67%).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
Ipsos iris replaced Comscore as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage. This is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.
May 2024
ITV re-entered the top ten for audience reach among UK news websites in May, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking.
Metro saw the biggest year-on-year growth in reach among the top ten newsbrands but Sky News was second by that metric as well as top of the month-on-month growth chart.
And on engagement, Mail Online and The Sun both saw drops of more than 30% in minutes spent compared to May last year.
Audience to the Metro website was up 17% year-on-year in May to 16.1 million people, according to data from Ipsos iris.
It was followed by Sky News which also saw 10% growth compared to May 2023 to reach 19.7 million people.
In contrast, Mail Online (23 million, down 9% year-on-year) and The Telegraph (15.1 million, down 7%) saw the biggest falls among the top ten newsbrands by UK audience size.
Month-on-month, the broadcasters also had a strong May with Sky News and ITV (14.8 million) topping the table for audience change among the top ten names, growing 9% compared to April.
As a result, ITV re-entered the top ten sites by size of monthly audience in tenth place, edging Money Saving Expert down into twelfth position (audience of 14.1 million) behind the Daily Express (14.8 million) in eleventh. The rest of the top ten remained unchanged in a largely static month at the top.
The Mirror (audience of 22.1 million, up 6% month-on-month), BBC (39.1 million, up 4%), The Sun (23.9 million, up 2%) and Mail Online (up 2%) were the remaining four top-ten newsbrands to reach more people in May than April
The BBC was unmoved from the top of the table as the newsbrand with the largest monthly audience in the UK, followed by The Sun in second place and Mail Online in third.
Among the wider top 50, Reach’s Gloucestershire Live and Irish Mirror were again the fastest-growing newsbrands year-on-year. Audience to Gloucestershire Live was up 293% to 4 million people, while the Irish Mirror was up 183% to 3.4 million.
Business title Forbes doubled its audience (up 100% to 6.8 million) while entertainment newsbrand Joe also performed well in May with its audience rising to 3 million, up 78% year-on-year.
Screenrant (up 54% year-on-year), Bristol Live (up 51%), Financial Times (up 47%), Birmingham Live (up 37%), TechRadar (up 30%) and the New York Times (up 20%) also grew in what was a strong month for many newsbrands - only 13 of the top 50 saw an audience drop compared to last May.
Month-on-month among the whole top 50, Gloucestershire Live was again the top performer (up 38%), followed by Unilad (3.4 million, up 32%) and the Financial Times (4.5 million, up 28%).
Audiences spent most time with the BBC (9.4 billion minutes) followed by Mail Online (1.5 billion minutes) and The Guardian (969.5 million minutes).
Mail Online saw a large year-on-year fall in time spent with its content - down 30% compared to May 2023, as did rival The Sun (316.2 million minutes, down 39%).
In contrast, paywalled brands continued to demonstrate strong growth in time spent with their content. Audiences spent 761.4 million minutes with the Telegraph (up 23% year-on-year), 565.5 million with the Times & Sunday Times (up 40%) and 379.8 million with the New York Times (up 66%).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
April 2024
The Independent fell back to sixth place in Press Gazette’s latest ranking of the biggest news websites in the UK after a strong March that saw it overtake the Mirror and The Guardian.
The Independent’s UK audience fell by 5% month-on-month in April to 19.7 million, according to the latest Ipsos iris data.
Meanwhile the Mirror moved back into fourth (audience of 21 million, up 1% month-on-month) and Guardian back into fifth (20.5 million, down 2% month-on-month).
DMGT’s Metro was however, the only top ten brand to see significant growth in audience compared to March, and was the fastest-growing top ten newsbrand in the UK, with its monthly audience up 15% year-on–year to 16.4 million people.
The Telegraph (15.9 million, up 3%) and Money Saving Expert (up 1%) were the remaining top ten newsbrands to make month-on-month gains.
Metro was also the fastest-growing newsbrand year-on-year with audience up and 16% compared to April 2023.
Second-fastest growing year-on-year was Martin Lewis’ consumer newsbrand Money Saving Expert (audience of 13.9 million, up 6%) while Sky News (18.1 million, up 2%) was third.
They were the only three top ten names to grow year-on-year in April. Instead several well-known names, among them Mail Online (audience of 22.5 million, down 9.1%), The Sun (23.4 million, down 11%) and the Mirror (21 million, down 13%), saw significant drops.
The BBC was unmoved from the top of the table as the newsbrand with the largest monthly audience in the UK at 37.8 million people, followed by The Sun in second place and Mail Online in third.
Among the wider top 50, Reach’s Gloucestershire Live and Irish Mirror both more than doubled their audiences compared to April last year. Audience to Gloucestershire Live was up 184% to 2.9 million, while the Irish Mirror’s audience was up 152% to 3.3 million.
A number of other newsbrands also saw growth of over 50% year-on-year in April, among them Forbes (audience of 6.7 million, up 86% year-on-year), People (3 million, up 76% and Future-owned Tech Radar (3.6 million, up 58%).
Many of the same names also performed strongly month-on-month with visitors to the Irish Mirror up 34% compared to March, up 27% at Forbes and up 24% at Tech Radar.
Looking at engagement, audiences spent most time with the BBC (9.4 billion minutes) followed by Mail Online (1.5 billion minutes) and The Guardian (904 million minutes) although the latter fell below the one billion mark.
Paywalled brands again punched above their weight on time spent with their content compared to the size of their total reach with The Telegraph ranked eighth for reach but coming fifth for time spent at 762.4 million minutes - up both month-on-month (6%) and year-on-year (61%).
The Times and Sunday Times, which ranked 13th for audience, came in sixth for a second month in a row by total time spent with its digital content (599.5 million minutes).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
March 2024
The Independent’s audience was up 8% month-on-month in March, leading to it jumping from sixth to fourth place in Press Gazette’s latest monthly ranking of the biggest news websites in the UK.
The Independent’s monthly audience was up to 21 million, meaning it has leapfrogged the Mirror (20.7 million) and The Guardian (20.8 million) to reach fourth place for the first time since Press Gazette started using Ipsos iris data for this ranking.
The Mirror fell from fourth to sixth place, with a month-on-month drop of 3% compared to The Guardian’s 2% growth.
The Independent’s growth was the joint-highest in the top ten with The Telegraph in ninth place, which was also up 8% month-on-month to 15.5 million.
Mail Online (audience of 22.7 million, up 6%) and Metro (14.3 million, up 5%) also saw audiences that were at least 5% bigger than in February. ITV (audience of 14 million) and the Mirror saw the biggest falls, at 3% each.
Year-on-year, the UK’s biggest newsbrands saw a much slower month with all but The Independent (up 8% year-on-year) seeing smaller audiences in March 2024 compared with the same month in 2023.
ITV (down 18% year-on-year), Mirror (down 17%), Metro (down 15%), The Sun (audience of 23.7 million, down 15%) and The Guardian (down 14%) all saw-double digit drops.
Among the wider top 50, Gloucestershire Live, ranked 39th, more than doubled its audience year-on-year reaching 3.9 million people - up 139% compared to March 2023.
It was followed by Forbes (5.3 million, up 44% year-on-year) and Canadian-based entertainment news site Screenrant (3.9 million, up 38%).
Reach regional sites, Bristol Live (audience of 4.9 million, up 8%) and Birmingham Live (11 million, up 7%) saw the next biggest year-on-year growth.
We have not included GB News in the above chart. Its audience was up 3,515% year-on-year however, this is due in part to the fact that GB News launched a new dotcom URL last year meaning that not all growth will be organic.
Compared to February, women’s lifestyle publisher Cosmopolitan saw the largest boost to its audience - up 42% month-on-month to 3.8 million.
It was followed by Yorkshire Live (4.9 million, up 33%) and CNN (3.5 million, up 31%). Yorkshire Live (also known as Examiner Live) was one of five Reach websites, three of which are regional brands, in the fastest-growing sites month-month, along with OK (5.2 million, up 23% month-on-month), Gloucestershire Live (up 15%), Daily Express (13.2 million, up 13%) and Manchester Evening News (11 million, up 13%).
The BBC remained top of the table for overall audience (38 million), although Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
The Sun was again the second largest newsbrand and the top commercial name (23.7 million), followed by Mail Online.
Audiences also spent most time with the BBC (9.4 billion minutes), followed by Mail Online (1.6 billion minutes) and The Guardian (1 billion minutes).
The Guardian overtook ITV (893 million minutes) which fell into fourth place. Total time spent with The Guardian was up 29% year-on-year and 5% month-on-month. ITV in contrast recorded a 25% fall compared to February.
Paywalled brands again punched above their weight on time spent with their content compared to the size of their total reach with The Telegraph coming fifth for time spent (719 minutes) compared to eighth for reach.
The Times and Sunday Times, which ranked 13th for audience, came in sixth for total time spent with its digital content (633.2 million minutes), up one place from February, while The New York Times, ranked 23rd for audience reach, came in eighth for minutes spent (371.5 million).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
February 2024
None of the ten biggest news websites in the UK saw a bigger audience in February than in January, according to Press Gazette’s latest monthly ranking.
ITV saw the biggest fall among the top sites by audience size, down 7% compared to January (14.4 million) according to data from Ipsos iris. It was followed by Mail Online (audience of 21.4 million), Sky News (17.7 million) and the Mirror (21.3 million), which each saw a 6% month-on-month fall in audience.
This trend was in contrast to January, when all but three of the top ten newsbrands grew their audiences month-on-month.
Year-on-year the picture was the same for the top ten brands with each recording declines compared to last February. Seven saw double-digit drops including Metro (with 13.6 million unique visitors in February) seeing the largest year-on-year fall at 15%. Sky News, the Guardian (audience of 20 million) and the BBC (37.6 million) saw falls of less than 10%.
Among the wider top 50, a Reach regional newsbrand recorded the largest month-on-month growth in audience for the second month in a row. Audience to Gloucestershire Live was up 20% in February to 3.4 million, echoing Bristol Live’s gain in January, and leading to it re-enter the top 50 in 37th place. LBC (audience of 4.3 million) shared first spot with Gloucestershire Live, also up 20% month-on-month.
They were followed by Irish Mirror (audience of 2.7 million, up 16% month-on-month) and another Reach brand, Yorkshire Live (3.7 million, up 13%).
Two newsbrands just outside of the top ten, The Evening Standard (ranked 15 with an audience of 10.9 million, up 9% month-on-month) and The Times and Sunday Times (rank 12, 12.1 million, up 5%), also grew monthly in February.
Year-on-year, relative newcomer GB News, which launched a dotcom url last year, saw the fastest growth in the top 50. Audience to the newsbrand was up 167% compared to February 2023 at 9 million people. It was followed by Gloucestershire Live (up 130% year-on-year) and People (2.9 million, up 59%).
The BBC remained top of the table for overall audience, although Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
The Sun remained the second largest newsbrand and the top commercial name (23.4 million), followed by Mail Online (21.4 million), the Mirror (21.3 million), and The Guardian (20 million) in an order unchanged from last month.
Audiences also spent most time with the BBC (10.7 billion minutes), followed by Mail Online (1.6 billion minutes), and ITV (1.2 billion minutes), with BBC and Mail Online both seeing falls of 11% and 12% respectively in time spent with their content compared to January.
Paywalled brands again punched above their weight on time spent with their content compared to the size of their total reach. The Times and Sunday Times, which ranked 12th for audience, came in seventh for total time spent with its digital content (572.6 million minutes), while The New York Times, ranked 21st for audience reach, came in ninth for minutes spent (323.6 million).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
January 2024
Money Saving Expert and The Telegraph saw month-on-month double-digit growth of their audiences in January, according to Press Gazette’s latest monthly ranking.
Martin Lewis’ consumer newsbrand reached an audience of 14.2 million in January, up 20% compared to December, while audience at the Telegraph was up 10% to 15.2 million.
They were among seven of the top ten newsbrands by audience size that saw more visitors in January compared to December, according to data from Ipsos iris. Sky News (18.8 million visitors, up 6% month-on-month) saw the third fastest-growth.
Mail Online (22.8 million visitors) and The Sun (24.3 million) were the only two top ten newsbrands to see monthly falls in traffic. Traffic to Mail Online’s websites and apps was down slightly by 2%, while down by 1% for The Sun.
Compared to January 2023, all of the ten biggest newsbrands except Sky News saw their audiences fall year-on-year.
The Mirror (22.6 million people, down 11%) and The Telegraph (down 10%) recorded the largest drops. Sky News saw a slightly year-on-year audience boost (up 2%) while the BBC’s audience was unchanged.
Among the wider top 50, Reach’s Bristol Live saw the biggest monthly gain in audience (5.3 million people, up 29%), followed by health newsbrand Web MD (4.7 million, up 27%) and the Financial Times (3.7 million, up 24%).
The BBC remained top of the table for overall audience with 38 million unique visitors in January, although Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
The Sun remained the second largest newsbrand and the top commercial name, followed closely by Mail Online, the Mirror, and The Guardian (21.2 million).
The BBC was also top for total time spent with its website and apps in January (10.9 billion minutes), followed by Mail Online (1.8 billion minutes), and ITV (1.2 billion).
Despite coming in 25th place for reach (7.3 million people), The New York Times made the top ten for time spent, coming in ninth position as its audience spent 338.3 million minutes with its paywalled content during the month.
Year-on-year once again GB News, which launched a new .com URL in March last year, saw the biggest growth with an audience of 8.7 million, up 195% compared to January. While not all growth will be organic, the publisher has invested in ramping up its digital presence.
December 2023
The Sun increased its lead over Mail Online in December, growing its audience by 5% month-on-month while Mail Online’s audience fell by 1% according to Press Gazette’s latest monthly ranking.
The Sun reached an audience of 24.7 million in December, 1.5 million more than the 23.2 million people reached by Mail Online, according to data from Ipsos iris. In November the gap between the newsbrands was 100,000 people.
Between November and December Sky News also saw a jump of 5%, reaching an audience of 17.8 million.
At the other end of the chart, The Independent saw the biggest month-on-month drop of 12% down to 19.2 million, although it continued to have a bigger audience than Sky News.
Despite growing month-on-month, The Sun suffered a double-digit fall of 10% year-on-year.
All top ten newsbrands similarly saw falls in audience compared to December 2022 although The Guardian (20.8 million, down 1%), BBC (37.9 million, down 2%), Sky News (17.8 million, down 5%) and Mail Online (down 5%) saw smaller drops.
Audiences spent most time with the BBC (9.7 billion minutes), followed by Mail Online (1.6 billion minutes). Time spent with Mail Online was up 3% compared to November but down 20% compared to December 2022.
Despite coming in second place for audience reach, The Sun ranked eighth for time spent (359.6 million minutes), up 7% month-on-month but down more than a third (35%) compared to the same month last year.
Among the overall top 50, the Irish Mirror (audience of 3.3 million, rank 43) saw the biggest change compared to November as its audience was up 86%, followed by Unilad (4.5 million, up 21%) and Nottinghamshire Live (3 million, up 17%).
Year-on-year once again GB News, which launched a new .com URL in March last year, saw the biggest growth with an audience of 8.2 million, up 394% compared to last November. While not all growth will be organic, the publisher has invested in its ramping up its digital presence.
The BBC was again the UK’s biggest newsbrand by audience size, reaching 76% of the UK online population aged over 15), while The Sun was second and Mail Online third.
It should be noted that Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
The best ranked regional newsbrand, the Manchester Evening News, fell further down the table (audience of 11.7 million, rank 14) having dropped out of the top ten earlier this year.
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
November 2023
The Independent and Money Saving Expert were the only top ten newsbrands in the UK to buck the trend by growing year-on-year in November, according to Press Gazette’s latest monthly ranking.
Visits to ITV were up 20% year-on-year as the brand reached an audience of 15.5 million people, while visits to the Daily Mail were up 17% to 24.9 million, according to data from Ipsos iris.
Reach for The Independent was up 2% year-on-year as the brand reached a UK audience of 21.8 million people. Consumer advice newsbrand Money Saving Expert was meanwhile up 17% to 24.9 million as it re-entered the top ten in tenth place, according to data from Ipsos iris.
The Telegraph (13.8 million), ranked ten in October, fell outside the top ten to eleventh place in November.
The remainder of the top ten biggest newsbrands by number of visits saw audiences fall year-on-year. The Sun saw the largest fall (audience of 23.5 million, down 17% year-on-year), followed by ITV (14.9 million, down 16%), the Metro (14.4 million, down 14%) and the Mirror (22 million, down 14%).
Month-on-month changes were less sharp amongst this group of top ten sites. The Sun’s audience month-on-month remained mostly unchanged, while audience to the Mirror was down 4% compared to October, while audience to the Metro was down 2%.
Among the whole top 50, GB News, which switched to a new .com URL earlier this year, saw the largest audience growth by far, with audience up 472% year-on-year to 8 million. This represents the eighth month in a row for which GB News has been the fastest-growing newsbrand in the UK top 50, being a relatively new website.
Second-fastest growing were two Reach newsbrands - Gloucestershire Live (3.1 million, up 161% year-on-year) and Bristol Live (5.2 million, up 132% year-on-year). Earlier this year, Reach closed 13 of its new regional sites due to cutbacks at the publisher.
The BBC was again the UK’s biggest newsbrand by audience size (38.3 million visitors, reaching 77% of the UK online population aged over 15), while the Sun narrowly beat Mail Online (23.4 million) to come in second place given Mail Online’s larger month-on-month audience fall in November (down 6.1%). The Sun has historically been in second place behind the BBC, although Mail Online was ahead of the News UK brand in May, June, August, September and October.
It should be noted that Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
Manchester Evening News, which fell out of the top ten earlier this year, ranked two places higher than in October, coming in thirteenth (audience of 12 million, down 39% year-on-year), swapping positions with Birmingham Live (audience of 12.5 million, rank fourteen).
Of the ten sites with the biggest year-on-year falls, eight were owned by Reach. They included My London (audience of 2.8 million, down 60% year-on-year), Nottinghamshire Live (2.6 million, down 56%), and In Your Area (3.2 million, down 43%). Several Reach newsbrands were among those with the biggest year-on-year falls in October as well.
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
The BBC was once again at the top of the table for most time spent with its content (9.5 billion minutes in November), followed by Mail Online (1.5 billion minutes) and The Guardian (1.1 billion minutes). All three saw slight month-on-month falls with time spent with their content.
The BBC and Mail Online also ranked first and second for page views, with the BBC reaching 3.1 billion page views and Mail Online 517.2 million.
October 2023
ITV and Mail Online were the fastest-growing top ten newsbrands by audience size in October, according to Press Gazette’s latest monthly ranking.
Among the ten biggest newsbrands, The Independent (audience of 21 million, up 8% year-on-year), The Guardian (22 million, up 2%) and the BBC (38.3 million, up 1%) also grew last month.
In September, ITV was the only top ten newsbrand by audience size to see a year-on-year audience boost. It is possible that the wider growth seen last month might be linked to an increase in interest in the news given the Israel-Hamas conflict began on 7 October.
However the remaining five top ten biggest newsbrands saw audience declines with The Telegraph (13.8 million, down 24%) and The Sun (23.6 million, down 18%) recording the largest falls.
Among the whole top 50, GB News, which switched to a new .com URL earlier this year, saw the largest audience growth by far, with audience up 758% year-on-year to 6 million. This represents the seventh month in a row for which GB News has been the fastest-growing newsbrand in the UK top 50. While the additional URL means that not all growth will be organic, the brand nevertheless is seeing a large growth in its online audience.
Second fastest growing for the second month in a row was youth-focused brand Unilad, up 245% year-on-year to 3.8 million.
Reach’s Bristol Live was third-fastest growing with audience up 46% to 4.7 million, knocking last month’s third-fastest growing newsbrand, Global’s LBC into fourth place (3.6 million people, up 36% year-on-year).
Fifth fastest-growing was Time Out (up 27% year-on-year to 4.9 million).
The BBC was again the UK’s biggest newsbrand by audience size (38.3 million visitors, reaching 77% of the UK online population aged over 15), while Mail Online was once again in second place ahead of The Sun in third. The Sun has historically been in second place behind the BBC, although Mail Online was also ahead of the News UK brand in May, June, August and September.
ITV came in eighth place. The broadcaster had lost its top ranking to Money Saving Expert for one month exceptionally in August, but as of September has regained its top ten ranking. Money Saving Expert was ranked eleventh in October.
It should be noted that Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
Manchester Evening News continued to slip down the table after dropping out of the top ten earlier this year. It was ranked fifteenth in October (audience of 11.9 million, down 33% year-on-year). MEN is no longer the largest regional newsbrand in our ranking, as Birmingham Live was ranked thirteenth (audience of 12.5 million).
Liverpool Echo (7.8 million, down 40%), Chronicle Live (5.5 million, down 39%) and My London (2.9 million, down 48%) - all Reach newsbrands - saw the biggest year-on-year falls in the top 50.
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
The BBC was once again at the top of the table for most time spent with its content (9.7 billion minutes in October), followed by Mail Online (1.7 billion minutes) and The Guardian (1.2 billion minutes).
The BBC and Mail Online also ranked first and second for page views, with the BBC reaching 3.4 billion page views and Mail Online 559.9 million.
Ipsos iris replaced Comscore as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage.
This is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.
September 2023
GB News was the fastest-growing news website in the UK for the sixth consecutive month, according to Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
Visits to gbnews.com were up 650% year-on-year as the brand reached an audience of 6.2 million people in September - although its audience was down from August’s total of 6.6 million.
GB News switched to a new .com URL earlier this year. While the additional URL means that not all growth will be organic, the brand nevertheless is seeing a large growth in its online audience.
It was followed by youth-focused brand Unilad, sister brand to Ladbible. Unilad.com’s audience was up 335% year-on-year to 3.2 million.
Third fastest-growing was Global’s speech radio station LBC (up 87% year-on-year to 4.2 million). In the latest RAJAR results, published on Thursday, LBC also grew its radio listenership slightly in the third quarter of the year, with London listenership up 2% and its UK-wide audience up by 1%.
Bristol Live (4.7 million people, up 41%), Screenrant (3 million, up 32%), Radio Times (7.3 million, up 29%), Forbes (3.5 million, up 11%) and ITV (14.8 million, up 5%) were the remaining five brands that saw any year-on-year growth in September.
ITV was the only top ten newsbrand by audience size to see a year-on-year audience boost in another slow month for the UK’s biggest newsbrands. Among the top ten, Metro (14.6 million, down 26% year-on-year) and The Telegraph (13.5 million, down 27%) saw the biggest drops, each shedding more than a quarter of their audiences.
The third-largest newsbrand in the top 50 by audience, The Sun, also saw a large drop (audience of 22.8 million, down 19%).
Mail Online and BBC fared better, seeing year-on-drops in the low single digits. Audience to Mail Online was down 2% year-on-year, while visitors to the BBC were down 3%.
The BBC was again the UK’s biggest newsbrand by audience size (37.7 million visitors), while Mail Online retained its second place spot having overtaken The Sun in August to become the UK’s largest commercial newsbrand in our ranking (23.9 million visitors). The Sun has historically been in second place behind the BBC, although Mail Online was also ahead of the News UK brand in May and June.
Money Saving Expert, the consumer news website founded by Martin Lewis, had entered the top ten in August but fell back to eleventh place (13.2 million) in September, while ITV re-entered the top ten in eighth position.
It should be noted that Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV, which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content, will therefore be higher.
Manchester Evening News, which dropped out of the top ten earlier this year, held on to fourteenth place (audience of 11 million), although it lost more than a quarter of its audience (28%) compared to last September.
Cosmopolitan (audience of 2.7 million, down 56% year-on-year), the i (8.2 million, down 47%) and Hello (8.4 million, down 44%) saw the biggest annual audience falls.
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
There was no change in the ranking for engagement, with the BBC at the top of the table again for most time spent with its content (9.6 billion minutes in September). It was followed by Mail Online (1.7 billion minutes) and The Guardian (1 billion minutes) in a top three unchanged from August.
The BBC and Mail Online also ranked one and two for page views with the BBC reaching 3.3 billion page views and Mail Online 529.9 million. The Sun, while only ranking eighth for time spent, was third for page views (260.5 million), just beating the Guardian (252.3 million).
August 2023
August marked another slow month for growth among the UK’s top ten newsbrands, according to Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
Six of the biggest newsbrands by audience size saw a smaller audience in August compared to the same month last year, according to data from Ipsos iris.
However The Guardian’s (rank six) audience was up 2% year-on-year to 21.6 million, while The Independent (rank four) was up 1% to 21.6 million. The BBC and Sky News saw no year-on-year change in audience.
Among the top ten newsbrands by audience size, Metro saw the biggest fall in audience for the second month in a row. The number of visitors to the DMGT-owned brand was down 26% year-on-year to 14.5 million, echoing a similar fall (28%) last month.
The Sun (down 17%), Mirror (down 13%) and The Telegraph (down 13%) also saw double-digit falls in the number of people accessing their websites and apps.
Public broadcaster the BBC remained at the top of the table for audience size (37.8 million visitors), however Mail Online overtook The Sun to become the UK’s biggest commercial newsbrand in our ranking. The Sun has historically been in second place behind the BBC, although Mail Online was also ahead of the News UK brand in May and June.
Money Saving Expert, the consumer news website founded by Martin Lewis, entered the top ten in August with an audience of 14.2 million, displacing ITV into eleventh place.
It should be noted that Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content will therefore be higher.
Among the top 50 as a whole, fastest-growing was GB News (audience of 6.6 million, up 564% year-on-year), making it the fastest-growing newsbrand in the top 50 every month since April when Ipsos began tracking its new .com URL. While the additional URL means that not all growth will be organic the brand has nevertheless seen a huge surge in its online audience.
It was followed by Global’s speech radio station LBC (up 115% year-on-year to 5.5 million). LBC has recently stepped up its investment in on-air talent, hiring Natasha Clark from The Sun as political editor while Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel joined parent company Global last year from the BBC. Third was Reach’s Bristol Live (3.8 million, up 112%).
Manchester Evening News, which dropped out of the top ten earlier this year, was the best-ranked regional news brand in fourteenth place (11.8 million, down 27% year-on-year).
Youth publisher Ladbible saw the biggest year-on-year audience fall in the top 50 (down 53%, audience of 4.3 million).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
Looking at engagement, audiences spent most time with the BBC’s content (10 billion minutes), followed by Mail Online (1.8 billion minutes) and The Guardian (1.1 billion minutes).
Despite ranking third for reach, the Sun ranked seventh for time spent with its content (453.4 million minutes).
Mail Online also scored well on time per user, with audiences spending an average of 76 minutes with its content, second only to the BBC (264 minutes).
Ipsos iris replaced Comscore as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage.
This is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.
July 2023
All but one of the UK’s ten biggest news websites saw a year-on-year fall in traffic in July, according to Press Gazette’s monthly top 50 ranking.
Among the top ten newsbrands by audience size, Metro saw the biggest fall as its audience declined by 28% year-on-year to 14.2 million, according to Ipsos iris.
The Telegraph (13.8 million visitors, down 17%) and The Sun (24.3 million, down 13%) also saw double-digit falls in the UK audience to their websites and apps.
ITV, which has seen regular year-on-year growth following the launch of its streaming service ITVX at the end of 2022, also saw its audience fall (15.1 million, down 4%).
The only top ten name to buck the trend was The Guardian whose audience rose by 1% to 20.8 million.
It follows a slow June for most of the UK’s household news names when only four top ten brands recorded year-on-year audience growth.
While the BBC remained at the top of the table for audience size (37.9 million visitors), The Sun overtook Mail Online to resume its place as the UK’s second biggest newsbrand in our ranking, ending Mail Online’s run of being in second place in May and June.
It should be noted that Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Reach and minutes for brands such as the BBC and ITV which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content will therefore be higher.
There were further changes near the top of the table compared to June, as The Telegraph dropped from ninth to tenth place and Money Saving Expert (audience of 13.4 million) fell from tenth to eleventh. Metro climbed from eleventh to ninth.
Among the top 50 as a whole, fastest-growing was GB News (audience of 6.6 million, up 545% year-on-year), making it the fastest-growing newsbrand in the top 50 every month since April when Ipsos began tracking its new .com URL. While the additional URL means that not all growth will be organic the brand has nevertheless seen a huge surge in its online audience.
It was followed by Global-owned speech radio brand LBC, whose audience was up 109% year-on-year to 6.1 million, while third was Reach’s Yorkshire Live (4.7 million, up 23%). LBC has made a series of high-profile hires, with The Sun's chief political correspondent Natasha Clark joining as its political editor this summer, while former BBC journalists Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel joined parent company Global last year to front podcast The News Agents.
Yorkshire Live was also the only Reach regional newsbrand in the top 50 to not see a year-on-year audience decline in July. My London (audience of 3 million, down 51%) and Nottinghamshire Live (3.6 million, down 38%) recorded the largest falls among this group.
Healthline Media, the American publisher of Medical News Today, was again the best-ranked non-UK brand (9.9 million visitors, rank 17) beating The New York Times (7 million, rank 24).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
Looking at engagement, audiences spent most time with the BBC’s content (10.3 billion minutes). Despite falling to third place for reach, Mail Online remained second for engagement (1.9 billion minutes).
It was followed by three brands that all recorded strong year-on-growth in time spent. Total minutes were up 22% year-on-year at ITV (1.2 billion minutes), 30% at The Guardian (1.1 billion minutes) and 27% at Sky News (693.5 million minutes), despite the two broadcasters having a smaller audience than in July last year.
The Sun, while ranking second for reach, was seventh for engagement (469.4 million minutes).
June 2023
Mail Online was the fastest-growing top ten newsbrand in the UK in June, according to Press Gazette’s monthly top-50 ranking.
There were 24.5 million visitors to Mail Online’s website and apps in June, an increase of 4% year-on-year. June was, however, a slow month for the UK’s biggest news names as Mail Online was one of only four top ten brands to record growth.
The DMGT-owned brand was followed by Sky News (18.4 million, up 3% year-on-year), ITV (15.5 million, up 3%) and The Guardian (20.5 million, up 1%). ITV’s growth this month was slower than recent months as the broadcaster has seen regular double-digit growth following the launch of ITVX at the end of 2022.
The remainder of the top ten saw fewer visitors in June, with The Sun (audience of 24.3 million) recording the largest fall at 13%.
Among the top 50 as a whole, fastest-growing was GB News (6.7 million, up 643%). The broadcaster switched to a .com URL earlier this year which Ipsos began tracking in April, meaning that not all growth will be organic, but the brand has nevertheless seen a huge surge in its online audience. Digital chief Geoff Marsh recently told Press Gazette that GB News intends to become one of the UK’s biggest news websites.
Second-fastest growing was Global-owned talk radio brand LBC, whose audience was up 128% year-on-year (4.8 million) while third was Reuters News (4.7 million, up 23%) which remains free despite paywall plans announced in 2021 and revived earlier this year.
The BBC remains the UK’s biggest newsbrand by audience size. The corporation's website and apps reached 37.7 million people in June and it was the only newsbrand to reach over half of the UK online population aged over 15 with a 75% reach.
It was followed by Mail Online (reach of 49%), The Sun (24.3 million people, 48% reach), the Mirror (22.9 million, 46% reach) and The Independent (audience of 21.1 million, 42% reach), in a top five unchanged from May.
The Guardian remained in sixth place with 20.5 million unique visitors.
Manchester Evening News (10.4 million people, rank 14) was again the best-placed regional newsbrand, although it saw a large fall in audience compared to last June (down 33%).
Healthline Media, the American publisher of Medical News Today, was the best-ranked non-UK brand (9.8 million visitors, rank 15) beating The New York Times (6.9 million, rank 24).
To create this top-50 list, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
In addition to reach, the BBC led on engagement, with audiences spending 9.5 billion minutes with the brand in June.
Second placed was Mail Online (2 billion minutes) while in third place was The Guardian (1.1 billion minutes). The Guardian recorded another strong month for year-on-year growth in time spent with its sites and apps (up 42% in June and 38% in May).
Ipsos’ data measures the total unduplicated number of people who use a brand’s websites and apps, meaning not all content will be news content, which may increase the audience and time spent with brands such as ITV and BBC who also have a large non-news offering.
May 2023
GB News was the fastest-growing newsbrand in the UK in May, according to Press Gazette’s monthly top-50 ranking.
The audience for the GB News website was up 353% year-on-year to reach 7.2 million, according to data from Ipsos iris.
The broadcaster’s digital chief Geoff Marsh, who joined GB News from the Express last year, recently told Press Gazette that it has a "very ambitious plan" to take on the UK’s biggest news websites. (GB News adopted a dotcom URL earlier this year which Ipsos began tracking in April, therefore not all growth will be organic).
GB News was followed by Timeout which has also had a recent run of growth after going digital-only in 2022. Unique visitors to the listing and culture title were up 39% year-on-year to 4.3 million.
Among the ten biggest sites in May by audience size, ITV was the fastest-growing for the fourth month in a row with audience up 20% year-on-year to reach 14.7 million people. ITV, which launched its streaming service ITVX at the end of 2022, saw similar growth last month with its year-on-year audience growing 25% in March.
ITV was the fastest-growing large newsbrand by a big margin. Second and third fastest-growing Mail Online and Sky News grew 3% year-on-year (audience of 25.2 million and 17.9 million respectively).
Of the ten biggest sites, Metro saw the biggest fall. its audience in May was down 23% year-on-year to 13.8 million, echoing last month’s double-digit fall for the DMGT-owned brand. The Mirror (audience of 23.3 million) and The Sun (25.1 million) saw sfalls of 8%.
The BBC was again the UK’s biggest newsbrand by audience size. The corporation's website reached 38.3 million people in May (76% of the UK online population aged over 15). It was followed by Mail Online (reach of 50%), The Sun (50% reach), the Mirror (47% reach) and The Independent (audience of 20.8 million, 41% reach).
The Guardian fell one place to sixth (audience of 20.7 million).
Martin Lewis-run consumer news and advice website Money Saving Expert (13.2 million people) was again the best-ranked specialist newsbrand, although it dropped from 11th position in April’s ranking to 13th in May.
Manchester Evening News (11.6 million people, rank 14) was again the best-placed regional newsbrand. Fellow Reach regional brands, Birmingham Live (7.9 million people), Liverpool Echo (7.5 million) and Wales Online (7.2 million) also made the top half of the table.
To create this top-50 rankingt, Press Gazette used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be based in journalistic content. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
The BBC led on engagement, with audiences spending 9.4 billion minutes with the brand in May which represents no change from April. It was again well ahead of second placed Mail Online (2.1 billion minutes) and third-placed Guardian (1.1 billion minutes), which overtook ITV this month due to a month-on-month audience boost for the newspaper publisher. Time spent with the Guardian was up 38% year-on-year.
The BBC also led for average minutes spent with its content per person per month (244 minutes). Ipsos’ data however, measures the total unduplicated number of people who used a brand’s websites and apps in a given month and includes all traffic, not necessarily just news. Data for brands such as the BBC and ITV which have a strong entertainment offering in addition to news content will therefore be higher.
April 2023
ITV was again the fastest-growing top ten newsbrand in the UK in April, according to Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
ITV, which launched its streaming service ITVX at the end of 2022, saw similar growth last month with its year-on-year audience growing 25% in March.
Fellow broadcaster Sky News also grew its digital audience in April with unique visitors up 9% year-on-year to 17.7 million.
The Guardian (audience of 21.5 million people, up 7%), The Telegraph (15.9 million people, up 3%) and Mail Online (24.8 million people, up 1%) were the remaining three top ten newsbrands to grow in April.
At the other end of the top ten list, Metro (14.2 million people, down 18%) saw a double-digit year-on-year fall in audience.
Among the entire top 50, fastest-growing was GB News (5.8 million people, up 469%) Three Reach regional titles made the fastest-growing list. Nottinghamshire Live was up 68% year-on-year to 4.2 million, second-fastest growing was Time Out (4.4 million, up 40%) while Good Housekeeping (4.9 million people, up 35%) was third.
Time Out, which closed its print edition last year after 54 years, has featured among the fastest-growing sites in the top 50 regularly in 2023 and led the table in March.
The other two Reach regional newsbrands among the fastest-growing list were Lancs Live (3.1 million, up 22%) and Wales Online (7.3 million, up 18%).
The BBC was unmoved from its position at the top of the ranking for audience, reaching 38.1 million people in April - equivalent to 76% of the UK online population aged over 15.
It was followed by The Sun (26.3 million people, 56% reach) and The Mirror (audience of 24.8 million, 50% reach). The Guardian, which last month knocked The Independent out of the top five, retained its fifth place ranking in April with 21.5 million visitors during the month.
Martin Lewis’ consumer news and advice website Money Saving Expert (147.8 million people) was the best-ranked specialist newsbrand coming in 11th position, while Manchester Evening News (84.8 million people, rank 15) was the best-placed regional newsbrand.
For our list, we used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be news or lifestyle sources. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
The BBC was top for engagement, with audiences spending 9.4 billion minutes with the brand in April, well ahead of second placed Mail Online (1.8 billion minutes) and third-placed ITV (727.1 million minutes). ITV saw the largest year-on-year growth, up 68%, in the total minutes spent with its content.
The BBC also led for average minutes spent with its content per person (246 minutes), while Mail Online (71 minutes) and ITV (51 minutes) were second and third respectively.
March 2023
ITV was the fastest-growing top ten newsbrand in the UK in March by a long margin, according to Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
ITV’s audience was up 25% year-on-year and 5% month-on-month to reach 17.2 million people, according to data from Ipsos iris. ITV launched its streaming service ITVX, which includes news content, at the end of 2022.
Five other newsbrands in the top ten also grew in March. They were The Guardian (audience of 24.1 million, up 7% year-on-year), Sky News (19.2 million, up 4%), the BBC (39.2 million, up 2%), the Telegraph (16.8 million, up 1%) and The Sun (27.9 million, up 1%).
Among the top ten, The Independent saw the largest fall in audience (20.8 million, down 10% year-on-year). This followed a smaller drop of 2% in February.
The BBC retained its regular position at the top of the ranking for audience, reaching 78% of the UK online population aged over 15. It was followed by The Sun (56% reach), The Mirror (audience of 24.8 million, 50% reach), Mail Online (audience of 24.8 million, 50% reach) and The Guardian. In a reversal of last month’s change of position, the Guardian overtook the Independent to take a spot in the top five, while The Independent fell to sixth place.
For our list, we used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be news or lifestyle sources. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
Among the entire top 50, fastest-growing was Time Out (5.1 million, up 71% year-on-year). The destination specialist publisher, which was the second-fastest growing newsbrand in our list in February, closed its print edition last year after 54 years of publication.
It was followed this month by three Reach titles: Nottinghamshire Live (4.8 million, up 50% year-on-year), Wales Online (9.8 million, up 47% year-on-year) and Bristol Live (4.5 million, up 38% year-on-year).
The BBC again led for engagement, with audiences spending 9.4 billion minutes with the brand in March - up 1% year-on-year and up 3% month-on-month. Next best-ranked was Mail Online (2 billion minutes), and ITV (889.2 million). Reflecting its increased reach, the total minutes spent with ITV were up by 46% year-on-year.
February 2023
ITV and Manchester Evening News were the only top ten newsbrands in the UK to grow year-on-year in February according to Press Gazette’s monthly ranking.
ITV’s audience was up 20% year-on-year to 16.5 million, while the audience to Manchester Evening News grew 10% to reach 16.6 million, according to data from Ipsos iris.
ITV's growth could be attributed to the launch of streaming service ITVX, which includes news content, towards the end of 2022. It also once again saw a large year-on-year increase in minutes spent with its content - up 54%.
The rest of the ten biggest newsbrands in February saw drops in audience. The Daily Express saw the biggest drop as its audience was down 17% to 16.7 million compared to February 2022. This followed a 17% year-on-year drop in January as well.
It was followed by Sky News (down 9% to 17.8 million), The Sun (down 8% to 26.8 million) and Mail Online (also down 8% to 23.4 million).
This is the second month for which Press Gazette has year-on-year data for the sites in our top 50 ranking following Ipsos’ recognition as the industry-recognised standard in 2021.
The BBC again commanded the largest audience during the month, reaching 78% of the UK online population aged over 15 (38.9 million people), followed by The Sun (54% reach), the Mirror (24.6 million people, 49% reach) and Mail Online (48% reach).
While the top four remained unchanged from last month, The Independent grew 8% compared to January reaching 21.1 million people, displacing The Guardian (audience of 20.7 million) from fifth place.
For our list, we used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be news or lifestyle sources. From July onwards, this list of 50 is drawn from a list of 100 traditional and digital native online brands which in our view present editorially-driven content covering news, current events, lifestyle and culture. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
Among the top 50 as a whole, lifestyle and culture brands performed well for year-on-year growth, although fastest-growing was Reach regional Nottinghamshire Live (audience of 5.3 million, up 102% year-on-year). It was followed by Time Out (4.4 million, up 64%), which closed its print edition last year after 54 years of publication and Glamour UK (3.4 million, up 52%).
The BBC again led for engagement, with audiences spending 9.1 billion minutes with the brand in February - four times higher than next-best placed Mail Online (2.3 billion minutes), although the BBC figures include its entertainment content and not just news. Third was ITV (882.7 million minutes) while fourth was The Guardian (662.8 million minutes).
January 2023
The New York Times was the UK’s fastest-growing newsbrand in January, according to Press Gazette’s ranking of the 50 biggest online news names.
It was followed by Reach regional Nottinghamshire Live (six million visitors, up 62% year-on-year), Time Out (4.1 million visitors, up 47%) and music and entertainment publisher NME (4.1 million, up 43%).
This is the first month for which Press Gazette has year-on-year data for the sites in our top 50 ranking following Ipsos’ recognition as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. In January last year Ipsos increased the sources of embedded browser traffic counted in its data, as well as its total internet population figures.
Among the ten biggest sites by audience size, only Manchester Evening News (18 million visitors, up 5%) and the Mirror (25.3 million visitors, up 1% year-on-year) increased their traffic.
Among the top ten, the Independent (20.4 million visitors, down 12%), Metro (16.9 million, also down 12%) and the Daily Express (17.6 million, down 17%) saw the biggest year-on-year drops.
The BBC again commanded the largest audience during the month, reaching 76% of the UK online population aged over 15 (38.1 million people), followed by The Sun (26.3 million, 53% reach), the Mirror (51% reach) and Mail Online (24.3 million, 49%). The Guardian (21.7 million, 43% reach) rounded out a top five that saw the title climb one place on its December ranking, but remain otherwise unchanged.
For our list, we used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest that Press Gazette considers to be news or lifestyle sources. From July onwards, this list of 50 is drawn from a list of 100 traditional and digital native online brands which in our view present editorially-driven content covering news, current events, lifestyle and culture. Our list covers both consumer and industry (B2B) media. You can consult our list of 100 brands and read more about our criteria here.
Brands such as Apple and Google, while well-known names in news, are excluded from our list given the wide reach of their non-news content. Google News and Apple News are not reported by Ipsos as separate entities in brand level data.
The BBC again led for engagement by a long margin (audiences spent 9.9bn minutes with the brand in January), although it should be noted its figures include its entertainment content and not just news. Second-best placed was Mail Online (2.2 billion minutes) while third was The Guardian (731.8 million minutes).
Fourth best-ranked for total minutes, ITV saw a large year-on-year increase in minutes spent with its content which was up 39% to 701.5 million minutes. This could be attributed to the launch of streaming service ITVX, which includes news content, towards the end of 2022.
The New York Times, while ranking 26th for reach, came tenth for engagement having seen a huge year-on-year increase in time spent with the brand’s digital properties (212 million minutes, up 804% year-on-year). The site saw a boost in its popularity after its acquisition of Wordle last spring.
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