For this research, we took content from The Daily Mail, The Economist, The Guardian, BBC News, GB News, Channel 4 News, Sky News, ITV News, and Joe.co.uk’s Facebook, X, TikTok, and Instagram accounts, as well as their web articles, measured their engagements, and pulled out some patterns.
So what did we learn?
Daily Mail’s TikTok is a UK publishing behemoth
The Daily Mail poses us a bit of a problem in trying to look at the aggregate numbers for this study, as its TikTok has roughly the gravitational pull of a neutron star with more than a billion engagements this year.
It’s not that other publishers and platforms didn’t see success — millions of engagements are nothing if not impressive — it’s just the Daily Mail’s success on this one platform distorts the lens through which we’re able to view and perceive all other content.
Publisher engagement by platform
The graphs below show the breakdown of engagement by publisher on each platform. The Daily Mail’s success on TikTok means we need to look at these in three different charts so we can see what’s going on.
The below chart looks at engagement across web, Facebook, and X for these ten publishers.
Joe.co.uk performed best with its Facebook Page, where it had the second most engagement of any of the publishers we looked at, with 12 million.
Comparatively, GB News and Sky News saw the most success on X with their main accounts, though the raw numbers were lower for almost every publisher than they were on other platforms.
For example, the BBC News account has 114 million engagements on TikTok — not far below its Instagram performance — while ITV News has 147 million. These should still be seen as huge success stories, despite looking comparatively smaller than they otherwise would thanks to the Mail.
It’s all well and good talking about the big numbers, but what’s actually driving the success? As you’d expect, it varies by platform. On web, top articles this year have included Princess Kate’s cancer treatment (BBC, 355k), tributes being paid to Maggie Smith following her death (BBC, 290k), and The Economist’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (178k).
The focus on web tended to be on celebrity news (particularly deaths), and politics, with the US election drawing a lot of attention. But what about the other platforms?
Relatable content breaks through on Facebook
Facebook is a broad audience — it remains the biggest social network by a distance, and as such it follows that the most successful content there appeals to a wide range of people.
The posts below from the Daily Mail and Joe.co.uk are emblematic of that, taking situations that users can relate to and reporting on them.
The Economist’s Pakistan coverage breaks through on X
X was nothing like Facebook in terms of its most successful content, and that’s because it was dominated by one topic — Imran Khan’s arrest in Pakistan. This was a highly divisive topic, and clearly drove huge interest around the world, as eight of the top ten posts on X comprised The Economist’s coverage of the topic at the beginning of the year.
The former prime minister of Pakistan writes from prison that his party is being unfairly muzzled, in a guest essay for The Economist https://t.co/6DBPaTgETY
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 6, 2024
'They (farms) will all be bought by foreigners, outsiders, people who are who are not buying it for the love of the countryside.' Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, tells @beverleyturner why he is supporting farmers at a rally in London today. pic.twitter.com/AF3odqLad7
— GB News (@GBNEWS) November 19, 2024
The Daily Mail goes international on TikTok
While this analysis focuses on British publishers, that does not mean it is limited to content about the UK.
The Daily Mail actually sees great success with its international coverage, which was a big driver of engagement for the publisher.
@dailymail BREAKING: The Menendez brothers are one step closer to freedom after Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon recommended they be resentenced for killing their parents. Gascon held a press conference on Thursday afternoon where he recommended Erik and Lyle receive a new sentence - 35 years after they murdered their parents Kitty and Jose inside their Beverly Hills mansion. His recommendation is that they be eligible for parole immediately. #menendezbrothers #menendez #crime #truecrime #news ♬ original sound - Daily Mail
@dailymail New Zealand's parliament was briefly suspended after Maori members staged a haka to disrupt the vote on a contentious bill that would reinterpret a 184-year-old treaty between the British and Indigenous Maori. 🎥Parliament.nz #newzealand #maori #vote #haka #news ♬ original sound - Daily Mail
The BBC leads with culture on Instagram
The BBC was by some distance the most successful publisher on Instagram, and its culture coverage was the primary driver of that success. Its top two posts were about a Golden Globe win for Hayao Miyazaki, and a high-profile wedding in India.
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
This trend went well beyond these two posts though, including an Oscar win for Cillian Murphy and Al Pacino having a Shrek phone case.
Eight of the top ten Instagram posts were from the BBC News account, with only The Daily Mail able to disrupt its streak of success. The Mail’s posts were both about YouTube trends, including a weight loss video from Nikocado Avacado and IShowSpeed coming fourth in the famous cheese-rolling race.
The new rules of engagement
Our analysis of UK publishers reveals some unexpected trends in the digital media landscape:
- The engagement with news content on TikTok suggests that serious journalism can thrive in short-form video formats. It’s not just trendy dances in 2024.
- National publishers are finding success with international content, challenging the notion that local news dominates engagement.
- The success of relatable, everyday content alongside hard news marks a shift in what audiences consider newsworthy.
- Platform audiences have their own niches and points of interest, with success on one platform not guaranteeing it on another, even if otherwise optimized for multiple platforms.
Social media is constantly changing, and the fragmentation of the landscape means publishers need to continuously reevaluate their content strategies, platform priorities, and even their definition of news to stay relevant.
For more on this topic, you can find our full, global analysis of 50 publishers in our report here.