Reuters and Forbes are the UK’s most popular websites for business news, according to an updated ranking by Press Gazette.
Global news brand Reuters reached 3.8 million people in May, according to Ipsos iris – 8% of the UK online population aged over 15. Reuters’ consumer-facing website – which does include other types of news alongside business – is currently free to access, although it is bringing back delayed plans for a paywall.
It was followed by Forbes (3.4 million people, 7% reach) while the Financial Times ranked in third (3.1 million people, 6% reach).
Axel Springer-owned Insider Inc, which includes the website businessinsider.com and the general news site insider.com, was last year’s most popular business brand, reaching 4.6 million people. This year the combined brand fell to fourth place, reaching 2.9 million people. Despite its drop, it was among the four business and finance news brands to reach over 5% of the population.
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Most popular business news websites in the UK (monthly audience):
1. Reuters News (3.8 million)
2. Forbes (3.4 million)
3. The Financial Times (3.1 million)
4. Insider Inc (2.9 million)
5. Bloomberg (1.8 million)
6. Investing (1.2 million)
7. CNBC (1.1 million)
8. The Wall Street Journal (905,163)
9. Moneyweek (897,233)
10. Investopedia (893,617)
For the ranking, Press Gazette used Ipsos iris’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the biggest which, in our view, have a significant general business or finance news offering. While general news brands, such as CNN, carry considerable reporting on business and finance, we focused on the brands that were primarily geared to a business and professional financial readership and excluded consumer finance websites.
Of the 14 brands on the list, the British weekly investment magazine Money Week saw the biggest year-on-year growth in readership, as the number of readers accessing its sites and apps grew 458% to reach 897,822 people in May 2023.
Kalpana Fitzpatrick, senior digital editor of Money Week, said: "Money Week has been growing its digital offering since last year with an expanding online team to deliver investment and personal finance news. This is building on the success of the magazine and allows us to reach a wider audience online."
Five other brands on the list also grew year-on-year. They were: Fortune (515,681 people, up 30%), City AM (609,795 people, up 30%), Investing (1.2 million people, up 23%), the Financial Times (up 5%) and Reuters News (up 4%).
The Wall Street Journal saw the biggest year-on-year fall (905,163 people, down 55%) although the subscription-focused publisher continues to grow its paying audience. Its owner, News Corp, reported that the title had 3.9 million digital subscribers in its quarterly results to May 2023, up 5% year-on-year.
Despite ranking third for audience reach, for the second year in a row, the Financial Times led the list when it came to total minutes spent with its content.
Its audience spent 46.5 million minutes in total and 15 minutes on average per reader with the FT’s content in May – more than three times as much as second-placed Reuters (five minutes on average per user).
Audiences spent 17.1 million minutes with Reuters, down 27% year-on-year, and 7.3 million minutes with Insider (down 46%).
While the leading business brands reach a significant audience, many are premium publishers for whom reader revenue is the main income stream, meaning that engagement is a more important metric than reach. Earlier this year, research by Press Gazette found a full-price annual digital subscription to the FT cost £319, £199 to Bloomberg, £189 to the Economist and £180 to the Wall Street Journal, making them some of the UK’s most expensive paywalls.
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.
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