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February 24, 2016updated 02 Jun 2016 9:52am

NRS figures suggest mobile readers are providing huge boost to reach of UK national newspapers

By Dominic Ponsford

The latest figures from the National Readership Survey show huge growth in monthly reach for national newspaper titles.

Most of the growth appears to be coming from mobile devices, although the year on year comparisons are boosted by a change in the NRS methodogy which is said to have pulled in more mobile readers.

The readership estimates are based on nationwide survey conducted throughout the year and on digital data provided by Comscore for November 2015.

According to NRS most national newspaper websites now have double the number readers on mobile devices that they do on desktop computers. The NRS claims that the Mirror has nearly four times as many readers on mobile as desktop.

The Daily Mail is the most read national newspaper in print and online according to the NRS, with a monthly reach of nearly 29m people said to be reading it at least once a month either in print or online.

The Telegraph has overtaken the Mirror to take second place, both on 26m, followed by The Guardian on 25m.

The figures illustrate the extent to which the paywall was limiting the Sun’s audience.

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It had the highest reach of any title in print at the end of 2015. But when digital is taken into consideration The Sun’s reach was half of that of the Telegraph and the Mirror and lower than the Independent and the Express.

UK national newspaper monthly audience reach Dec 2015 (source NRS)

Title Net print, PC and mobile  2015 Net print, PC and mobile  2015 Total print Jan-Dec 2015 Total PC Nov 2015 Total mobile Nov 2015
000s 000s 000s 000s 000s
Daily Mail / dailymail.co.uk 28870 24449 10171 9033 19348
The Daily Telegraph / telegraph.co.uk 26274 16357 3823 9100 19115
Daily Mirror / mirror.co.uk 26116 17484 6035 5339 19400
The Guardian / theguardian.com 24710 16314 4059 8822 18287
Metro / metro.co.uk 20220 14211 10528 2738 11900
The Independent / independent.co.uk 19375 10442 2290 5262 14718
The Sun / thesun.co.uk 13750 13628 11210 1782 2330
Daily Express / express.co.uk 11412 6839 2716 2503 7289
London Evening Standard / standard.co.uk 9980 6718 5267 1851 5102
Daily Star / dailystar.co.uk 6782 N/A 2536 915 3883
The Times / thetimes.co.uk 5010 4911 4442 394 531
Daily Record / dailyrecord.co.uk 3938 2978 1173 719 2763
The Scotsman / scotsman.com 1907 1252 345 554 1225

 

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