November 20th, 2018

CNN Digital Tops All Competitors in October: #1 in Visitors, Video, Mobile, Social & Politics

Heading into the U.S. Midterm Elections, CNN Digital continued its leadership position in digital news, ranking as the number one source for online news in October 2018, with an audience larger than all competitors in unique multiplatform visitors, mobile visitors, video starts, politics and social following.

 

#1 IN MULTIPLATFORM VISITORS

CNN once again had a larger audience reach than any other news source in October 2018 with 117 million unique visitors domestically. CNN outranked The New York Times by 19 million unique visitors and Fox News by 27 million unique visitors across platforms.

CNN: 117 Million Unique Visitors

  • The New York Times Brand – 98 million unique visitors
  • FoxNews.com – 89.7 million unique visitors
  • WashingtonPost.com – 89.4 million unique visitors
  • NBCNews.com – 78 million unique visitors
  • DailyMail.co.uk – 67 million unique visitors

 

Source: Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, Custom-Defined List, Total Digital Audience, October 2018, U.S. Based on CNN.com entity compared to a custom list of single brand competitors that are also in the News/Information Category.

 

#1 IN MULTIPLATFORM VIDEO STARTS

Continuing its dominance in digital news video, CNN topped its competitors in September 2018 with 589 million multiplatform video starts, marking September the 41st straight month at #1. 

CNN: 589 Million Multiplatform Video Starts

  • FoxNews.com – 194 million starts
  • Yahoo News – 169 million starts
  • ABCNews.com Sites – 156 million starts
  • MSN News – 134 million starts
  • MSNBC TV – 93 million starts

 

Source: Comscore Video Media Metrix®, Custom-Defined List, Total Audience, September 2018, U.S. Based on CNN Brand entity compared to a custom list of single brand competitors that are also in the News/Information Category. (August September data is the most current available) 

 

#1 IN MOBILE UNIQUE VISITORS

CNN’s mobile audience of 92 million mobile unique visitors once again surpassed its competitors in October 2018. CNN saw 12 million more mobile users than second-place The New York Times and 21 million more than fourth-place Fox News.

CNN: 92 Million Mobile Unique Visitors

  • The New York Times Brand – 80 million unique visitors
  • WashingtonPost.com – 77 million unique visitors
  • FoxNews.com – 71 million unique visitors
  • NBCNews.com – 67 million unique visitors
  • DailyMail.co.uk – 61 million unique visitors

 

Source: Comscore Mobile Metrix®, Custom-Defined List, Total Mobile, October 2018, U.S. Based on CNN.com entity compared to a custom list of single brand competitors that are also in the News/Information Category.

 

#1 POLITICAL NEWS SOURCE

Leading up to the U.S. Midterm Elections, CNN Politics continued its dominance as #1 in the political news category for 3.5 years running with 47 million multiplatform unique visitors, 267 mm multiplatform views and 81 mm desktop video starts.

CNN Politics: 47 Million Multiplatform Unique Visitors

  • TheHill.com – 30 million unique visitors
  • Politico.com – 28 million unique visitors
  • Fox News Politics – 26 million unique visitors
  • NBCNews.com Politics – 17 million unique visitors
  • MSNBC TV – 13 million unique visitors

 

Source: Comscore Media Metrix®, New/Information – Politics, Total Digital Audience, October 2018, U.S.; CNN Politics has been #1 in the competitive rank in video and multiplatform views since March of 2015. **In the original release of October 2018 data, Comscore noted that CNN Politics was underreported for October 2018 mobile and therefore Media Metrix Multi-Platform data was originally underreported due to a processing issue. Full numbers were released and this post was updated on December 10, 2018**

 

#1 SOCIAL MEDIA

CNN has ranked as the number one social news outlet in the US for more than four years, with more fans and followers than any other competitor.

  • #1 news brand on Facebook with 48.5 million Facebook fans across CNN’s main accounts
  • #1 most followed news brand on Twitter with 95.2 million followers across CNN’s main accounts
    • @CNNBRK alone had over 12.1 million more Twitter followers than the leading competitive flagship account (The New York Times – 42.3 mm followers) and 36.2 million more than Fox News (18.0 mm followers)
  • #1 most followed US news brand on Instagram with 6.1 million followers

 

Sources: Shareablee, October 2018. Brands included in comparison are CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, HuffPost, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC News, BuzzFeed, ABC News, NPR, Mashable, The Daily Mail, NowThis, AJ+, Al Jazeera English, NBC News, CBS News, HLN, and Yahoo News. Facebook main accounts for CNN are CNN and CNN International. Twitter main accounts for CNN are @CNN and @CNNBRK. Instagram for CNN includes flagship account only

 

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