Following unprecedented levels of digital traffic in March 2020, The Sun and The Times have delivered record brand reach in the latest PAMCo figures.

The Sun is again the UK’s number one newsbrand, with 39.8million monthly readers and The Times & The Sunday Times reaching 16million adults, as readers turned to trusted newsbrands for the fast moving COVID-19 outbreak and lively political landscape including the General Election and Brexit.

The Sun’s brand reach in the period was up 7.3% QoQ and 34% YoY with the highest share of audience of any title on mobile at 35million. The Times & The Sunday Times brand reach was up a record 39.3% QoQ and 87.3% YoY.

The brands have been fuelled by strong digital growth, with The Times and The Sunday Times’ digital products up 58.5% QoQ and 180.9% YoY – more than any other PAMCo reporting period.

The newsbrands have also seen deeper engagement, with The Sun’s app read for 8.3 minutes longer per user than a year ago and improving its minutes per active user by 66.6% YoY to 20.8 minutes. The Times and The Sunday Times app is read for 33 minutes per active user. In print, The Sunday Times recorded its highest ever engagement with each reader spending over 93 minutes on average reading the paper.

The Combined reach of all newsbrands is now 39.6million adults a day, 48.million adults a week and 49.2million adults a month (+48%, +25.2%, +16.9% YoY respectively). Each month, newsbrands collectively reach 9.7million more adults than Google and 5.2million more than Facebook, according to PAMCo.

News UK COO, David Dinsmore said: “In times of uncertainty, and of world-wide importance, readers have once again turned to trusted newsbrands, which are being consumed and read by more readers than ever before. At News UK our titles have been fuelled by digital growth and deeper engagement with our content. But looking ahead we are also growing our Home News Delivery operation as part of the 260,000 new industry HND orders through the Deliver My Newspaper website alongside our digital growth story.”