Welcome to UKOM's Online Market Overview for June 2026. Using UKOM endorsed data from Ipsos iris, the OMO provides a top-line snapshot of the UK population’s online behaviour across computers, tablets and smartphones.
Key insights this month include:
- As the temperature soared in June, so did audiences to weather apps and websites with category reach surpassing 70% - nearly 5m more people than in March. On 26th June, when the mercury peaked at 37.7°C in the UK, 1 in 3 people checked the weather online. The five most visited weather brands were BBC Weather, Met Office, Apple, The Weather Company and AccuWeather.
- Retailers benefited from the hot spell as people rushed to buy fans and portable air-conditioners. Argos, Currys, B&Q and Screwfix all featured among the top 10 retailers with the largest audience gains between March and June.
- Other retailers that performed well in June included SHEIN (+2.9m, +18%), Ticketmaster (+1.2m, +22%) and the newly launched Chinese online retailer Joybuy whose audience grew from 1.3m in March to more than 2m in June - an increase of 58%.
- The audience visiting the ‘general news’ category peaked on 22nd June, the day Keir Starmer announced he was stepping down.
- Amazon Prime ‘Day’, held between 23rd and 26th June, resulted in significant increases in audience and time spent across both the Amazon app and website. During this period, the average daily app audience was 15.7m compared with 12.4m over the previous four days.
- Unsurprisingly, the World Cup resulted in audience uplifts for sports websites and apps. The football category audience grew by more than 7m between March and June. FIFA recorded the largest increase, gaining 5.1m while ESPN added 3.3m viewers to its online content.
- ITVX and BBC iPlayer also benefited from the World Cup. The ITVX mobile app added more audience than any other app between Mar and June (+3m, +67%) with the largest increases among males (+97%) and 15-24s (+180%) although Love Island is also likely to have contributed to the youth audience boost.
- The latest top-line data to the end of the World Cup showed that England v Mexico attracted the largest online app audience with 3.7m watching on the BBC iPlayer app - more than for the Argentina game and the final. On the ITVX app the audience peaked at 2.8m for Norway v England. For both brands, app engagement (ave. mins per person) was consistently higher on tablets than on smartphones.
For more information on the UK online market including the top online brands and apps and how usage varies by audience and device, please read or download the whole report below.
More information on Ipsos iris here.
