Traditional journalism continues to hold its own online against the reach of omnipresent tech platforms. New research shows that the UK news brand sector reaches 48 million people a month – more than the 43 million and 42 million claimed by Facebook and Google respectively.
Compiled by PAMCo the figures prove that the combined audience of all national news brands’ is now 45 million, exceeding their tech platform competitors by 2.5 million monthly. The daily readership of digital national news rising by 3.5 million year-on-year.
The figures further show that the digital daily readership of Britain’s national news brands surged by 3.5 million over the year to 19 million, an equivalent growth rate of 24%. This far exceeds the respective rate of growth at Facebook which added just 854k (3%) and Google which conspired to lose 3 million readers, a decline of 7%.
When read in conjunction with print readership, which for all its travails continues to draw 11 million daily readers, current newsbrand daily readership stands at 26 million – an increase of 8% year-on-year.
Tracy De Groose, executive chair of Newsworks, said: “Real journalism. Real audiences. Real reach. These latest figures from PAMCo are further evidence that concentrating digital spend into quality journalistic environments delivers.
“News readership is at record levels – and it is still growing – as more and more people are demanding reliable and trusted sources of news, analysis and insight.
“To outperform the platforms across these audience metrics is impressive and as the digital world continues to shift the next phase of digital advertising is looking significantly brighter for publishers.”
PAMCo has previously shown that digital newsbrand trust remains high among frequent readers.