Print media reached an estimated average of 30 million monthly consumers and 12 million daily consumers from June 2021 to September 2022.

Print’s reach was second only to smartphones, which dominated the media market with a total reach of 39 million monthly users and 21 million daily users; computers and tablets, however, lagged significantly behind print as media platforms, reaching just 10 million and six million respective monthly users.

Simon Redican, chief executive of PAMCo, told Printweek: “The top line is that [media’s] reach is fairly ubiquitous, 91% of people are obviously consuming content that publishers are putting out every month [...]

“There’s a slight growth in digital, but actually print is fairly robust - it holds up.”

The majority of the population (56%) continue to consume data through print media, according to the research.

Women read more print media than men; the difference was particularly strong in the magazine market, where 26% more women than men read magazines at least once a month.

This most recent survey is the second PAMCo has done with its new remote methodology. Where previously the non-profit was constrained to in-person interviews, since the pandemic it has found it significantly easier to get a good sample for its data.

Redican said: “Going into people’s homes, doing a 30-minute interview to look into their readership habits was a tried and true way of collecting the data, and we continue to do that.

“But we were already starting to think: can’t we use technology to get people who might offer their time, but might not be comfortable with having somebody into their home?

“So we developed an online questionnaire [...] so we’ve got a mixed methodology. But the fundamental thing about all audience research is that we’ve got a representative sample.”

PAMCo does not record the reach of trade or niche publications, rather covering 93 national UK print brands and 86 of its leading digital media brands.