Top UK online publishers: X plummets, Reddit surges, news publishers ranked

X (formerly Twitter) saw the biggest audience drop among the 25 biggest website publishers in the UK between May 2024 and May 2025.

The latest Ipsos iris data puts X Corp on a monthly UK user base of 20.6 million in May, down 12% compared to May 2024, making it the 24th biggest online publisher in the UK.

X also saw the biggest drop in time spent, with total minutes in May down year on year by 34% to 4 billion (meaning it was still the ninth biggest by that metric).

Meanwhile, Reach remains the only commercial news publisher to feature in the top-ten ranking in terms of monthly reach. Mail Metro Media is the largest commercial news publisher by some margin in terms of time spent with its websites.

X saw a spate of users choose to leave last year, with some departing in August as owner Elon Musk waded into UK politics in the wake of the Southport attack and subsequent riots, and a further “exodus” in November when Donald Trump won the US presidential election with Musk first at the heart of his campaign and then his government via the new Department of Government Efficiency.

The latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report indicated a political shift among X users since Musk’s October 2022 takeover: in the UK, 29% of left-leaning respondents used X for news in 2021, down to 16% this year but among right-leaning people usage went from 10% to 18%.

News publishers have seen referral traffic from X plunge to negligible levels as the platform gives less visibility to posts containing links.

The biggest audience increase in the past year was at Temu owner WhaleCo, up 42% to 29.7 million.

Four out of the top five website publishers in the UK are US-owned.

Meanwhile, Reddit continues to see an audience boost after Google algorithm updates meant its users’ posts now frequently show up in search results pages. Reddit appears to have been far more visible in Google search results since February 2024 when its owner struck a $60m annual deal which allowed Google to make use of its content to train AI models.

Reddit was the eleventh biggest media organisation in the UK in May with an audience of 31.2 million, up 27% year on year.

Reddit was just behind X for total minutes spent (3.7 billion, up 18% year on year). It also saw an 11% increase in page views to 871.1 million.

Tiktok owner Bytedance saw its UK audience grow by 14% to 29.4 million during a period when its forced closure or sale in the US is in limbo.

Bytedance had the third-highest total of monthly minutes spent (27.2 billion, up 17%), behind Meta (112.8 billion, up 20%) and Alphabet (111.6 billion, up 11%).

The BBC remained the biggest news organisation with an audience of 42.2 million behind the four major tech giants (Google owner Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft).

Reach saw its audience reach grow by 4% compared to May 2024 to 36.6 million but Mail Metro Media (29.2 million, down 1%) and News UK (29.2 million, down 2%) both saw a small decline.

Also in the top 25 were The Independent and Evening Standard (a combined audience of 24.3 million, up 2%) and The Guardian (23.7 million, up 10%).

Despite being the biggest commercial publisher by audience size, Reach was the sixth biggest by total minutes spent with its content in May.

Mail, Metro and The i Paper publisher Mail Metro Media saw 1.5 billion minutes spent (down 9% year on year) while Reach had 689.8 million across its network of national and regional sites (steady compared to May 2024).

Several publishers fell just outside the top 25 online organisations list as ranked by monthly UK audience reach:

• Future – 19.4 million
• Immediate Media – 19 million
• Yahoo – 19 million
• Telegraph Media Group – 18.9 million
• ITV – 18.6 million

Looking at regional news publishers, Newsquest was on 16.2 million and National World was on 15 million.

Ipsos iris uses a mixture of results from a 10,000-strong survey panel and site-based user tracking to provide its estimates for online reach. solutions.

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