ABC: Mirror and Indy see strong growth in September

Traffic to Mirror Group's national websites grew by 145 per cent year-on-year, according to the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).

ABC's latest multi-platform report, released today, showed Mirror Group Nationals' September traffic grew by 16.95 per cent from the previous month – the highest monthly percentage growth in the report – reaching 76 million monthly average browsers, up from 65 million in August.



Mirror's year-on-year growth is partly due to the outlet making "real progress" as a publisher on social media, as well as the success of mobile and video initiatives, said Simon Fox, Trinity Mirror's chief executive, in a press release today.

The Independent passed the 50 million mark in September, reporting 52.9 million unique monthly users, up by 15.36 per cent from 45.8 million in August.

The Independent's digital editor Christian Broughton said the media outlet's content and publishing operation has been "so much more web-focused".

Not counted individually in the report is The Independent's digital platform i100, launched in July. i100 had 2.3 million unique users of its own in its second month, Broughton said.

i100 is "well ahead of any projections we dared make for audience," he said, and it has been growing a "really engaged social audience" while trying "all kinds of new formats".

"We're showing the new editorial formats that everyone loves on social media can and do work brilliantly with serious, proper, authoritative news," he told Journalism.co.uk.

While i100 also publishes entertaining pieces and "fun things", it has been tackling serious subjects from ISIS to Ebola since its launch.

"The team, the three of them, they've debunked the UN statement on ISIS, sort of called out the UN which is not an easy thing for a small team to do, especially on a website with those kinds of formats," said Broughton.

While August was a rather slow month for media outlets with minimal changes in traffic numbers, September has seen a jump in traffic for most.

The Telegraph is up by 10.98 per cent, to 79.6 million from 71.7 million in August, while The Guardian has reported record traffic of 113.9 million this month, up from 103 million in August (10.53 per cent).

The Express saw a monthly traffic increase of 6.82 per cent, to 16.4 million unique browsers in September, up from 15.3 million.

In contrast, the Daily Star saw a dip of 8.77 per cent, down from 11.5 million uniques in August to just over 10.5 million this month. This is the first time it has reported a decline in traffic after consistent growth since the inclusion of its figures in the ABC report earlier this year.

Additional reporting by Alastair Reid

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