Data from Pamco has revealed that 91% of British adults read newsbrand or magazine content in a monthly period, with the newly published figures covering January 2020 to December 2021.
Magazines reached nearly 28 million people aged 35+ and newsbrands reached just over 33 million out of a of 67.1 million.
In the same time frame, more consumers from higher socioeconomic groups (ABC1) read magazines and newsbrands than lower socioeconomic groups (C2DE).
Magazines and news brands reached nearly 26 million and 30 million in the ABC1 bracket, whereas in the C2DE demographic, magazine brands reached 14 million people and newsbrands reached 17 million.
People over 35 were also more likely to access this content. Content from newsbrands was read by 33 million people in this demographic, and from people between 15-34 newsbrands were read by nearly 14 million people.
Magazines followed the same pattern, with nearly 28 million people over 35 and 12 million people between 15-34 accessing content from brands.
Simon Horne, interim chief executive, Hearst UK, and president, Hearst Europe, said it was "extremely reassuring" to see audiences turning to print.
Michelle Sarpong, trading director at The7stars, said: "The latest release of Pamco data reinforces the narrative that newsbrands are integral to audience consumption habits and the scale cannot be ignored."
She added: "While some may say the growth in newsbrand consumption is not surprising due to the news cycle of the last two years - Covid-19, lockdown, war - it just reaffirms that audiences still turn to newsbrands as a trusted source of information."
Unsurprisingly, smartphones were the most popular way to access newsbrands and magazines, followed by print, computers, then tablets.
In monthly reach for example, newsbrands were read by over 36 million people on smartphones, nearly 23 million people in print, 12 million people on computers, and 7 million people on tablets.
Simon Davis, chief executive at Walk-In Media, said: “From a planning perspective, we still have the bigger issue of whether it is wholly valid to fuse the loyal, fast-reach, high impact opportunity delivered by daily newsprint with the much longer tail of promiscuous readers delivered online who are served standard format digital ad units, or sometimes no advertising at all if they are a subscriber.”
Previous Pamco data is unable to be compared to these new figures, as the methodology is a blend of face-to-face collection used pre-Covid, and data collected with an “online first" methodology post-restrictions being lifted.
By June 2022 a new dataset will be released using the “online first” method.
Davis added: “There’s no doubt that an online-first approach to sample collection will skew responses upmarket and towards more educated people, possibly in favour of quality titles; and that free titles will be under-reported in the short term due to the time-lag on surveys as we have emerged from lockdowns."
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