New NRS figures show mobile focus bearing fruit at Mirror

The Daily Mirror has the biggest mobile audience as a percentage of its total audience in the UK, according to new figures released today by the National Readership Survey (NRS).

The quarterly NRS Print and Digital Data report puts the Mirror's mobile audience at 7.9 million, just over 45 per cent of its total 17.5 million UK audience.

Chris Russell, product director at Trinity Mirror Digital, told Journalism.co.uk the Mirror's "mobile-friendly strategy shows that a legacy newspaper brand can not only adapt to a digital age but be successful in doing so".

"We made a significant strategic decision more than two years ago to make the mobile user our highest priority," he said via email, "with those on the desktop site sharing the benefits rather than driving developments, while our content management system is configured so that journalists always preview the mobile version of an article before publishing."

Russell also highlighted the outlet's "increasing success on social media platforms" which put mobile first.

Martin Belam, Trinity Mirror's editor of new formats who has driven a number of recent digital projects at the publisher, has long championed the need to focus on mobile, last year identifying morning traffic peaks of 95 per cent from mobile devices and declaring "if you’re not making it work on mobile I think you’re dead in the water".


The Mirror's combined UK print and digital audience put it second only to the Daily Mail, which has long been the most widely read UK news brand, reaching 225 million global unique monthly visitors for January in the most recent report from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

According to the figures, the Guardian boasts the most digital readers as a share of its audience, at 91 per cent of its 16.3 million total.

The Guardian has a long-standing commitment to open, digital journalism, appointing Aron Pilhofer as executive editor for digital from the New York Times last summer.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk in October, Pilhofer described plans to restructure the newsroom to better serve the Guardian's digital audience with a focus on visual journalism, data journalism and audience development.


This was also the first time the Daily Express included figures in the NR PADD report, with its net UK audience of 6.8 million only higher than the Times.

The Express' UK digital readership was recorded as higher than both News UK outlets however, as the hard paywall at the Sun and the Times continues to stunt its online audience in comparison to the competition.

This has not stopped News UK from turning a profit on its digital offerings though, as The Times's deputy editor Emma Tucker said the paywall policy had been "vindicated" in December by helping Times Newspapers Ltd. turn a profit for the first time since 2001.

The NRS PADD is calculated by combining NRS data from January to December 2014 and comScore figures for November 2014. The full figures are viewable through the NRS website.

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