Magazine Single Sales tumble

According to newly released newsstand sales numbers by the Alliance for Audited Media, Cosmopolitan won the September issue battle with 698,500 total single-copy sales for its cover featuring Lucy Hale. While Cosmo won the battle, it isn’t exactly winning the war. In September, the title logged total single-copy sales of 1.1 million. That means that in the 12 months to September 2014, sales have declined 35.1 percent at the newsstand.

InStyle’s single-copy sales fell 26.5 percent in September, and Vogue’s sales declined 28.1 percent, while Glamour, which came in fourth in newsstand sales with 260,416 with its Olivia Wilde cover, nonetheless saw sales plummet 49.7 percent from September 2013.

Read more at WWD

Overall Consumer Magazine numbers fall in first half of 2014

For the first half of 2014, magazines reported a total average of 11.6 million digital replica editions (paid, verified and analyzed nonpaid), or 3.8 percent of total circulation. This compares with 10.2 million digital editions, or 3.3 percent of total circulation, in the first half of 2013. For the 367 U.S. consumer magazines reporting comparable numbers, total paid and verified circulation was down approximately 1.9 percent. Paid subscriptions were down 1.8 percent, and single-copy sales decreased by approximately 11.9 percent.

Read more at Audited Media

Why digital publishers want to be in the magazine business

Print magazines, meanwhile, are everything online publishers want — they stand for something with their audiences, they have established rates based on a long tradition of buying and selling. The publisher can artificially limit supply by cutting pages.

And the magazine-reading experience is different. Magazines may be losing importance as more readers shift online, but they’re still the ultimate engagement vehicle. Research has shown that people are more focused when reading print than when listening to radio or watching TV.

Meanwhile, online publishing is heading for trouble.

Read more here

Time Inc. spinoff reflects a troubled magazine business

While the digital side of the business has been making some gains, overall magazine print circulation (including single-copy sales, subscriptions and even digital replicas) has been down each of the past six years, while the number of print ad pages fell for the eighth year in a row in 2013.

Overall employment on both the business and editorial sides of U.S. magazines fell 3% in 2013, following a 4% decline in 2012, according to Advertising Age Over the longer term, consumer magazines have shed a total of 41,500 jobs since 2003 (a 28% drop).

Read more at Pew

Newspaper, Magazine Ad Fortunes Continue To Decline

The release of fourth-quarter figures for newspaper advertising and first-quarter figures for magazine ad pages earlier this month made it clear that the long decline of print advertising is going to continue -- and possibly even accelerate -- in coming years.

Print advertising has suffered a precipitous 60% drop over just seven years, with 27 straight quarters of year-over-year declines. This is the seventh straight quarter of year-over-year declines for magazines, wiping out the short-lived recovery enjoyed by the medium in 2010. Magazine ad pages tumbled from a total of 243,305 in 2005 to 150,699 in 2012, for a 38% decline over the last seven years.

Read more here

Ad revenue uptick for print mags in 1st Q

Print magazines saw a 0.5% lift in advertising revenue in the first quarter, to $4.13 billion from $4.11 billion in the first quarter of 2012, according to the latest report from the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). Ad pages declined 4.8% to 31,137 in the first quarter from 32,708 a year earlier. It was the first gain in almost two years.

More here

Magazine Ad Pages Slip

Print advertising is dwindling at consumer magazines. The Publishers Information Bureau released figures showing total magazine ad pages fell 4.9% from 33,673 in the first quarter of 2012 to 32,023 in the first quarter of 2013. Of 213 titles tracked by the PIB, 107 (50%) experienced ad page declines in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012.

Read more here.

the Publishing Company That Beat the Internet

With the advent of the Internet, the primary sources of revenue—circulation and advertising—have eroded, while the costs of printing magazines—ink, paper, and distribution—continue to rise.

(But) Meredith, the demure Iowa-based publisher of upbeat women’s service magazines (including Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Traditional Home, has profited from a few key strategies. They are experts at repurposing their content across multiple platforms (magazines, books, websites, mobile devices, tablets, etc.) and aggressively look beyond advertising and circulation for revenue. In print, they stay as far away from the news as possible. They are particularly successful at licensing their magazine titles’ names to major national businesses selling branded products; they also run their own marketing agency.

Advertising remains the company’s lifeblood. In 2012 ad sales accounted for $769.8 million of Meredith’s $1.37 billion of revenue. Of that, 64 percent came from the company’s publishing division. The rest came from ad sales at Meredith’s 13 regional TV stations.

Read more at Business Week

Magazine Launches Outpace Closures In 2012

There were 227 new magazines launched in 2012, according to Mediafinder.com, an online database of magazines owned by Oxbridge Communications. Launches significantly outpaced closures, with just 82 magazines shuttered during the year.

The number of new magazines launches was down slightly from 2011, when 239 new magazines debuted. The number of closures dropped even more dramatically, from 152 in 2011.

Read more here

Mag Bag: Ad Pages Continue To Fall

2012 is shaping up to be another lousy year for consumer magazines, at least as far as print advertising is concerned. According to the latest quarterly tally from the Publishers Information Bureau, total ad pages fell 8% to 36,059 in the third quarter of this year. That follows similar declines in the first and second quarters of the year; in the first nine months of 2012, ad pages are down 8.6% to 110,843.

Out of 216 titles tracked by PIB, 153 experienced declines in ad pages in the third quarter, including 88 which experienced declines of 10% or more, and 41 which experienced declines of 20% or more.

Read more here

Wondering How Far Magazines Must Fall

Magazines, all kinds of them, don’t work very well in the marketplace anymore. Like newspapers, magazines have been in a steady slide, but now, like newspapers, they seem to have reached the edge of the cliff. Last week, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that newsstand circulation in the first half of the year was down almost 10 percent. When 10 percent of your retail buyers depart over the course of a year, something fundamental is at work.

Historically, certain categories of magazine will encounter turbulence, but this time all categories were punished in the pileup.

It’s not just consumers who are playing hard to get: advertising is down 8.8 percent year to date over the same miserable period a year ago, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. With readership in such steep decline and advertising refusing to come back, magazines are in a downward spiral that not even their new digital initiatives can halt.

Read more at the NY Times

The threat of the internet has forced magazines to get smarter

With rare exceptions, making money in news means publishing either the cheap kind that attracts a very large audience, and making money from ads, or the expensive kind that is critical to a small audience, and making money from subscriptions. Both are cut-throat businesses; in rich countries, many papers are closing. But among magazines there is a new sense of optimism. In North America, where the recession bit deepest, more new magazines were launched than closed in 2011 for the second year in a row.

Read more here

Magazine Ad Pages Down 33% From 2006

While they have not fared as poorly as their print cousins in the newspaper business, consumer magazines have taken it on the chin over the last few years. Last year, total ad pages as measured by the Publishers Information Bureau were off one-third from their peak of five years ago, having declined 33.4% from 253,494 in 2006 to 168,742 in 2011. This is partly the result of the closure of some titles, as the total number of magazines tracked by PIB fell from 252 to 221 over the same period. But even magazines that survived endured steep losses. Read more here

Fashion Changes, and So Do the Magazines

If there really is a science to what sells, as editors generally believe, we can conclude that white backgrounds and red titles are an effective combination for moving magazines. Except that Glamour’s newsstand sales were down substantially last year, by 17 percent through June and (as submitted to the Audit Bureau of Circulation) 9.9 percent in the second half. Most women’s titles were down. Part of the problem, it would seem, is that by exploiting a winning formula, fashion magazines have made themselves indistinguishable.  This is why readers can expect to see some changes in the big March issues, most notably in Glamour and Harper’s Bazaar, each of which are unveiling major redesigns.

Read more at the New York Times

Digital Magazines Popular, Men Hold Edge

While more than half of both male and female tablet owners are interested in reading digital magazines, the proportion is especially high among males, with 77% of male tablet owners saying they want to read digital magazines on their device, compared to 68% of female tablet owners. That’s according to the latest research from GfK MRI’s iPanel, a new survey group composed exclusively of tablet and e-reader owners. Read more here

Print, Radio Revs Braced For 2012 Declines

2012 doesn’t hold much hope for some of the main traditional media categories, including newspapers, magazines and radio, judging by the latest advertising forecast from MagnaGlobal, which sees revenue losses for all three media. The declines come amid growing competition from online advertising, as well as continuing economic uncertainty. Total U.S. radio advertising revenues will decrease 0.8% in 2012, according to MagnaGlobal, which also predicts declines of 5.2% for magazines and 6% for newspapers. MagnaGlobal sees Internet media jumping 10.9%, due mostly to continued increases in paid search, online video, and burgeoning mobile advertising. Broadcast TV will grow 8.5% in 2012, largely on the strength of the Olympics and political ads. Outdoor media will experience more modest but sustained growth, with a 4% increase in 2012. Read more here

New Ladies’ Home Journal, Written Mostly by Readers

While women’s service magazines have long relied on readers to contribute content, from first-person accounts to recipes, Ladies’ Home Journal is taking that strategy to new lengths: beginning with the March issue, it will allow readers to produce the majority of its articles. The 128-year-old magazine, with an average paid circulation of 3.2 million, would be the first major mass-market magazine to draw on user-generated content for most of its pages. While most of the content will be user-generated, editors will continue to check facts in articles. Contributors will be paid the usual standard professional rates. And professional experts will also continue to provide advice, often alongside first-person accounts.

Read more at the New York Times.

Magazine Ad Demand Falters

After a tentative recovery following the economic downturn in 2009, consumer magazines are seeing ad pages fall again, raising the possibility of a long-term, secular decline in the medium similar to their print cousins in the newspaper business. Total ad pages fell 8% from 50,578 in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 46,508 in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, while print advertising revenues (based on official rate card figures) declined 4.9% from $6.02 billion to $5.73 billion. Read more here

Tool Reveals Which Celebs, Models Have Been Photoshopped

Researchers at the Department of Science at Dartmouth College have developed a software tool that can rate photographs based on how much they have been digitally altered with programs such as Adobe Photoshop. The proposed tool is part of an effort to bring truth to advertising and restore the perception of natural beauty.

Read more here

A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work