The Sun remains Britain’s most-read news brand, according to the latest figures for UK newspaper and website readership in 2018 released by Pamco (formerly the National Readership Survey).
The Sun print titles and associated websites reported a monthly reach of 29.286m – a whisker ahead of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online which had a combined monthly reach of 29.280m.
The figures are based on survey data for the year of 2018 combined with website readership data for November 2018 provided by Comscore.
The quarterly release provides an estimate of each newsbrand’s monthly readership reach in print and across various digital devices in the UK.
Free title Metro is estimated to be the most-read print newspaper in the UK with a monthly reach of 9.5m people.
The Pamco figures suggest that The Guardian/Observer and Guardian.com are winning the readership race at the “quality” end of the newspaper market with 25.2m readers a month.
The survey suggests that three years after the closure of The Independent’s print edition, the brand is still a force to be reckoned with – reaching 22m people a month, just fractionally behind the Telegraph on 22.7m.
Pamco stands for Publishers’ Audience Measurement Company and is a body created and run by news publishers and the advertising industry.
Pamco said that Newsbrands’ digital readership is up 12 per cent year-on-year.
National newspaper marketing body Newsworks said: “Given the current news agenda, this growth shows that people are continuing to turn to established news sources and professional journalists to make sense of the world around them.”
Pamco said the figures show that 25m people are reading a newsbrand every day and 44.5m people a week.
They said this compares to Facebook and Google’s total UK weekly reach of 38m and 38.5m respectively.
UK newspaper and website readership 2018 (source: Pamco)
| GB Adults 15+ | Monthly reach | ||||
| Total reach | Phone | Tablet | Desktop | ||
| Sun titles and websites | 29,286 | 21,174 | 3,209 | 3,210 | 8,250 |
| The Mail titles and website | 29,280 | 19,841 | 3,134 | 5,123 | 7,821 |
| The Guardian/Observer and website | 25,210 | 16,920 | 2,860 | 8,179 | 3,476 |
| Mirror titles and website | 23,963 | 17,904 | 2,305 | 2,963 | 4,246 |
| The Telegraph titles and website | 22,741 | 14,988 | 2,814 | 5,970 | 3,303 |
| Independent website | 21,994 | 16,913 | 2,441 | 5,154 | – |
| Metro and website | 20,916 | 12,172 | 1,511 | 1,928 | 9,500 |
| Express titles and websites | 17,827 | 10,964 | 2,503 | 4,973 | 2,157 |
| Evening Standard and website | 16,042 | 11,311 | 1,429 | 2,183 | 4,225 |
| The National – print only | 8,560 | – | – | – | 8,560 |
| The Times titles and websites | 8,038 | 2,706 | 623 | 1,174 | 4,752 |
| Daily Star titles and website | 7,530 | 4,482 | 785 | 1,209 | 1,839 |
| Daily Record/Sunday Mail and website | 4,446 | 3,047 | 338 | 505 | 955 |
| The Scotsman titles and website | 2,398 | 1,617 | 252 | 397 | 287 |
| The Yorkshire Post and website | 1,334 | 796 | 128 | 208 | 274 |
| The Herald titles and website | 1,001 | 470 | 99 | 211 | 287 |
| The Press and Journal and website | 720 | 403 | 76 | 115 | 171 |
| The Courier and website | 609 | 310 | 62 | 117 | 172 |
| Sunday Post and website | 549 | 117 | 17 | 27 | 395 |
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