The Youth Distribution Index
Benchmarking nine UK news publishers on the distribution-platform reach they're building among 18–34 year olds, weighted against their website audience.
Methodology in brief
A single number per publisher: website monthly visits divided by an aggregated, age-weighted distribution-platform following. Lower index = stronger relative reach where 18–34s actually live online.
What it answers
“How big is each publisher's distribution-platform footprint relative to its website audience?” Web visits come from Ipsos iris (April 2026); platform weights from the Ofcom News Consumption Survey; followers from Press Gazette rankings and live profile counts.
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Headlines The four numbers that frame everything below.
Best youth distribution
BBC News
Index 1.57 — strongest social-to-web ratio
Biggest distribution footprint
27.8m
BBC News Instagram followers
Biggest TikTok presence
Daily Mail
14.1m TikTok followers, main account
Biggest gap to close
Daily Express
Index 39.3 — 17.0m web visits, ~0.4m youth-weighted social
Of the nine titles, only BBC News and the Daily Mail have built distribution-platform audiences remotely proportional to their website reach. Everyone else is web-heavy.
02
The Index, ranked Click any column to re-sort. The “Index” column is the headline metric: lower is better.
| Publisher | Web visits (m) | Youth-wtd distribution (m) | Index | Social ÷ Web |
|---|
03
Visual breakdown Side-by-side audience comparison and the index ranking.
Web vs. youth-weighted distribution
Audience in millions
Index — strength of youth distribution
Lower index = better
04
Where each title plays Followers on each platform (millions). Darker shade = larger audience.
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