Mail Online and The Metro saw mobile traffic outstrip desktop in last year, says NRS survey
Major newspapers, including the Mail Online, The Daily Mirror and The Metro, saw their combined smartphone and tablet traffic outstrip desktop over the last year, according to statistics from the National Readership Survey (NRS).
The survey, which questioned 36,000 consumers on how they accessed news online, showed that the Daily Mirror attracted 6.2 million monthly readers from mobile devices, compared to 4.9 million on desktop computers between July 2013 and June 2014.
Meanwhile Mail online generated 10.8 million views on mobile devices, compared to 9.6 million on desktop computers, while the Metro saw a total 3.6 million views come via smartphones and tablet devices, with 2.9 million on desktop.
The NRS data also revealed that while The Guardian received 12.5 million monthly visitors over the last year, while The Times, which is now only available with a subscription, has only 365,000 digital readers.
Simon Marquis, chairman of NRS said that the advantage of this method over machine-based measurements of website traffic was that it allowed NRS to discover the context of why a site was visited and take a broad look at the health of the sector.
Increased mobile readership will be welcomed by hard-pressed publishers’ however mobile conversion rates for adverts still lag far behind those of their more stationary counterparts.