It certainly seems that way. Print as a whole has been struggling and magazines are reducing pages and shutting down titles. Circulation is certainly down, but it isn’t nearly dramatic as you might thinke. Total circulation is down by 32M (only 9%) since 2000. Much of that loss is from single copy sales (e.g. newsstand), while subscriptions have remained remarkably steady.
The story is worse for ad revenue, as overall magazine ad revenue has plummeted 24% from a high of $25.6B in 2007. This decline has also been driven by a recession that created pullbacks in almost all advertising mediums. The reality is that magazine ad revenue is actually up 15% vs. ten years ago.
At the same time, automotive ad spending in magazines has nosedived, down 46% vs. two years ago and down 37% vs. ten years ago.
Of course, automotive companies were particular hard hit by the recession and much of that spending will probably come back. And it should. Data from the J.D. Power and Associates Power Auto Offline Media Reports shows that magazine usage among new vehicle buyers remains consistenly high. In fact, 92% of new-vehicle buyers have read at least one magazine issue in the past six months, a rate that is virtually unchanged vs. 2002.
Further, new-vehicle buyers are actually reading more magazines than they did in 2002.
So while automotive advertising dollars are rightfully shifting to online, magazines remain a viable means of reaching consumers and should continue to remain part of the mix.
Tagged with: Magazines
2 comments ↓
Did you see any data comparing current events magazines (Time, Newsweek) vs. interest magazines like Wired, People, and fishing mags? The founders of Nielsen IAG spoke at UCLA the other day and they seemed confident that interest magazines will survive. I wonder if the decline of current event magazines will increase ad prices in the others that remain…?
It seems the Nielsen guys are onto something. Looking at the advertising data for individual titles, I found the following changes from 2000 to 2009:
- Time (-39%)
- Newsweek (-45%)
- Field & Stream (+23%)
- People (+29%)
- Rolling Stone (-8%)
- Wired (-9%)
Data on several hundred titles is available at http://www.magazine.org.
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