All of the UK’s national newspaper websites suffered a post-Olympic dip in September, led by double-digit declines at the Independent and Daily Star, as print editions proved more resilient.
The best digital performer, relatively speaking, was the Sun which saw daily average browser numbers drop by just 1.52% month on month to 2.9 million, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations published on Thursday.
Mail Online saw its daily unique browser numbers fall by by 3.2% month on month in September, to 14.7 million, the Guardian dipped by 4.65% to 7.9 million, the Mirror dropped by 6.65% to 4.9 million and Telegraph.co.uk reported an 8.79% decline to 4.3 million.
The biggest fallers were Independent.co.uk, which dropped by 11% to 3.2 million, Express.co.uk, down by 9.48% to 1.49 million and Dailystar.co.uk, which fell by 26.3% to 710,127.
The print market proved much more resilient with the Financial Times, Guardian, Observer and Sunday Times reporting increases in circulation month on month in September, from 0.25% at the Guardian to 2.27% at the FT.
Others kept their sales declines to about 1% or less, including the Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, i, the Times, the Sunday Mirror, and the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
The biggest fallers in the print market were the Daily Star Sunday, which fell by 5.56%, and the Daily Star, which declined by 3.6%.
Metro has claimed a scalp of sorts claiming that its Monday to Friday circulation of 1.34m sees it pass the Daily Mail’s weekday circulation (1.31m), making it the second most-read weekday newspaper in the UK after the Sun.
However, the comparison is slightly tricky given that Metro, which is undertaking a significant expansion of its national distribution, is free while the Mail is paid-for.
