Page views across regional news websites fell by nearly 25% YoY in January according to the latest Ipsos figures for the sector.
Regional news attracted a total of 666m page views last month, compared to 887.8m in January 2025 – a drop of 24.98pc.
The decline followed a 27pc fall in page views across the sector during December, although the overall audience for regional news sites remained steady.
It wasn’t all bad news, however – a number of Newsquest titles in particular, including Scottish daily The Herald (up 53pc to 5.3m) and The Northern Echo (up 17.7pc to 5.9m views) bucked the trend and posted year-on-year increases.
The Manchester Evening News remained the biggest regional news site, a fairly constant phenomenom, although the MEN has occasionally, albeit usually briefly, lost top spot to the Birmingham Mail in the rankings. The MEN had a January audience of 9.3m and page views totalling 46.9m, although in line with the prevailing trend the page views figure represented a 34pc drop year-on-year from last January’s 10.9m.
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Unique users for regional news brands, however, were down just 0.59pc overall on those for January 2025, suggesting that the total audience for regional news remains roughly the same – they’re just reading fewer pages.
On the other side of the audience growth coin, Newcastle’s Chronicle Live was the biggest Northern winner, recording a near-20pc increase with 3.4m unique users in January and taking sixth spot in the overall audience rankings, a place behind the Liverpool Echo in fifth (5.2m unique readers). The remaining three spots in the top six went to the Birmingham Mail (7m) Wales Online (6.4m) and London’s Evening Standard (5.2m).
Ipsos’ figures include all websites with more than 750,000 monthly unique users, more than 3m page views, and more than 2.5 average minutes per user.
Ipsos is one of the world’s largest multinational market research and consulting firms, headquartered in Paris, France. It specializes in public opinion polling, market research, and data analytics across various sectors, including advertising, media, marketing, and social issues. Founded in 1975, the company provides actionable insights to help understand society, markets, and people
