Last week, we profiled the state of the women’s, men’s and home interest magazine sectors.
Below are the full July to December 2011 ABC results for all key women’s, men’s, bridal, home interest and travel magazines. Enjoy!
(if you’re struggling to read these, you can download them here ABC Figures Jul- Dec 2011).
Women’s Lifestyle Magazines
Men’s Lifestyle Magazines
Bridal Magazines
Home Interest Magazines
Travel Magazines
Weekly Magazines
The top 50 actively purchased magazines are down collectively by more than 400,000 copies or 2.5% compared to six months ago. Moreover, it’s not just a few dragging circulation down, 33 of the magazines recorded declines.
There have been some launches, and it would seem that slimming is winning. Women’s Health has had its debut in the UK, after a very successful career as the sister title of Men’s Health across the globe and even Cosmo has launched yet another spin off on top of Cosmo on Campus – Cosmo Body.
Glamour retains its crown as highest circulating paid-for women’s monthly despite a decrease of nearly 7%. However, free title John Lewis Edition, published by John Brown, has overtaken it at the top of the Women’s Lifestyle sector overall, after it enjoyed a small 2.2% increase on the first half of 2011. Rival title Cosmopolitan was not so lucky and its decline of nearly 6% meant dropping below Woman and Home.
Good Housekeeping held its own and yet again led the way for the 35+ category, which on the whole reported a positive story. Red remained flat, whilst Prima boasted an increase of nearly 5%. Woman and Home had a small decline year on year but was up nearly 3% period on period.
Woman & Home magazine have been investing a lot more into their fashion offering. Women of a certain age (or middle youth as they are known in this industry) want a little bit more than the best recipe for apple pie or the most efficient food processor on the market. Long gone are the days of frumpy housewives in aprons who do not care about their appearance. If consumers are truly cutting down on the number of magazines they are willing to purchase, then they need to know that the one they are buying is giving them a bit more than the others.
Among the strugglers were More!, posting their third successive decrease (down 19 per cent to 152,571) and Psychologies Magazine (down 13 per cent to 104,491). Easy Living also had a hefty fall. The magazine and sister website have both received a much needed revamp in the last month under new editor Deborah Joseph.
Company magazine has also recently seen a revamp, in line with its spin off title, Company HS Edit. It is too early to tell whether this new look will be enough to stem the declining figures. The title has done a lot of research into their readers and what the market is truly hankering for. It is true, that any title aimed at the under 25s has suddenly taken on the appearance of a swanky street style blog. It’s very ‘too cool for school’, but perhaps Company have got it spot on. Is this what girls want? Time will tell. Nevertheless, they have done well to establish themselves as a very separate title (no longer Cosmopolitan’s little sister) by firmly marking their territory and going after a very specific audience.
The women’s weekly magazines sector was hit by a 9.6 per cent print circulation drop overall in the second half of 2011, but Take a Break remains the top-selling women’s title in the UK after a 5.1 per cent fall to 791,001 copies a week – according to ABC. IPC Media’s Now saw the biggest fall in sales, down 22.5 per cent year on year to 262,275, while Love It! was down 17.5 per cent to 200,027, and Pick Me Up dropped 17.6 per cent to 249,347 and Woman’s Own fell 7.6 per cent to 240,347. Only four titles in our analysis posted PoP increases -Closer, Women’s Weekly, That’s Life and Full House. All of the women’s weekly magazines recorded YoY declines.
Bauer’s Heat had a better performance than the first six months of 2011, when its circulation fell 21.7 per cent. In the second half of the year sales fell by just 12.1 per cent to 325,370. Is the hunger for gossip going away, or is it being consumed in other forms? The success of The Mail Online, and it’s celebrity packed content would suggest the latter.
Weekly fashion titles such as Look and Grazia have been making an effort to come up with something new and exciting. Not satisfied with the work load of creating a weekly magazine, they have set the challenge of producing a monthly in a week. The perfect bound issues of Grazia seem to be the current buzz in the market, even ES magazine have jumped on the uber fashion special issue. Look is soon to follow suit with its own perfect bound edition. This is a great move as it encourages a lot more fashion advertisers to consider them. A perfect bound issue looks expensive, it feels high end, it allows readers to get excited again.
The fashion weeklies in particular are under a lot of pressure to be all things for all women. As the supplements are battling over the title of best style guide, paid for titles like Grazia and Look have to fight harder to keep up. When consumers are picking up free supplements such as ES Magazine and Stylist, it makes them think twice about paying for something that doesn’t necessarily offer them much more. In tough recession times, consumers are less likely to be as promiscuous with their titles of choice.
The Men’s Lifestyle sector ABCs for July to December 2011 show a 2.5% decrease overall on this time last year (YoY) but a 4.9% increase on the first half of 2011 (PoP).
The free titles – Shortlist and Sport – remain in poll position ahead of paid-for titles Men’s Health and FHM. However, Men’s Health enjoyed an increase in sales PoP, as did GQ, Nuts, Zoo, Wired and a number of other titles.
However, it is a bleak picture for some men’s brands, with FHM, Men’s Fitness and Esquire all posting both YoY and PoP declines.
How long before some of these titles get put out of their misery? Take the free distribution out of the equation and the sector is down 12% and gathering downward momentum.
FHM’s glory days seem a long time ago, as it continues to head towards the 100,000 mark, with a whopping 21% decrease year on year.
IPC offloaded Loaded (which saw another 30% wiped off its circulation last year) and may soon feel that Nuts might have to go the same way.
The area that seemed to be of growing interest to the male magazine buying population, health, has surprisingly gone backwards this time around, with the 2 leading titles losing more than 10% of their sales year on year.
Men have not lost interest in the content provided by this sector, it would just appear that they are “getting it elsewhere”!
In total, 72 magazine brands have reported average circulation figures for their digital editions, more than quadrupling from the last reporting period, when just 16 reported.
ABC rules mean that the digital edition of a magazine – downloaded to tablets or smartphones through Apple’s app store and the Zinio platform – must have less than 5% editorial difference to the printed edition of the magazine.
Natmag Rodale’s Men’s Health title is the leading digital title, according to the ABC rules, registering 7,779 paid-for downloads in the six month period to the end of December, compared to 1,746 in the previous six-month period. The Men’s Health print title reported an average print circulation of 218,368 in the period, indicating that it is still early days for digital offshoots of magazines.
Future’s T3 gadget title came in second, reporting 7,327 downloads in the period. However, this figure only includes Zinio downloads as Future’s interactive iPad edition is not included. Future claims that an independent audit records 14,223 dowloads of the interactive iPad edition in the same period. Its interactive edition – audited by independent auditors Bright Graeme Murray – is not similar enough to the magazine to be registered with ABC.
Downloading and subscribing to digital editions of magazines has become easier for customers following the launch of Apple’s Newsstand – which groups digital magazines and newspapers in one place – in October last year.
It seems the population’s interest in DIY and garden tending is not waning. The trend for people to stay in their properties and improve rather than moving on is continuing. This has therefore kept the home interest sector as a whole rosy and blooming.
Overall, the Home Interest market is up 5.2% on last year (YoY) and 2.2% on the first half of 2011 (PoP) but there are loses for some of the key titles.
The newly formed Hearst Magazines UK have started their year badly with House Beautiful, Country Living and Coast magazines all experiencing a decrease in both YoY and PoP results. House Beautiful in particular had a shocking time with the latest ABC release, a circulation of 132,962, down a dramatic 19.5% year on year and 7.1% on the half year.
IPC will have cause for many a celebration after their new launch in May 2011, Style at Home, achieved a 36.6% PoP increase. Style at Home, a £1.99 monthly, was piloted for three months from February 2011 to target women who take a budget approach to home renovating, before its formal launch. Its circulation in the second half of 2011 was 71,806, up from 52,576 in the first half of 2011. It is nipping at the heels of Kelsey Publishing’s GoodHomes, which reported the highest year on year rise in circulation in the homes sector. GoodHomes had a monthly circulation of 76,113 copies in the last six months of 2011, up 26% YoY and up 3.6% PoP.
IPC’s Country Homes & Interiors reported the second highest YoY increase in circulation up 7.8% to 97,286 copies and was also up 5.1% PoP. To continue with their celebrations the IPC title Ideal Home overtook Country Living to take the lead in the Home Interest sector, even though both titles posted YoY and PoP declines. IPC Media now firmly dominate the women’s home interest sector with its portfolio recording a 45% share of the market in the final six months of 2011.
It seems that the two ends of the market are performing the strongest with budget titles Style at Home and Good Homes growing rapidly and the luxury end of the market performing well too. Elle Decoration had an average monthly circulation of 70,376 copies in the second half of 2011, up 2.7% year on year and flat against the previous period. House & Garden, the Condé Nast magazine, had an average monthly circulation of 127,311 copies keeping it flat both YoY and PoP.
It’s the conundrum facing all marketers, and it’s one that’s becoming ever more pressing as marketing becomes increasingly results focused – how should I be proportioning my marketing spend to achieve maximum return on investment?
Of course, the answer is different for every product and brand, but one useful input into this process is ‘what is everybody else doing?’ and it’s here that Ofcom’s recently released Communication Report for 2011 can help.
The report, produced annually, examines a wide range of communication trends from media consumption habits to smartphone adoption. It also includes figures from a wide range of sources which analyse advertising spend by media from 2005 to 2010. Here are the key findings:
- Spend on internet advertising, including search, display and classified, has more than trebled proportionally since 2005, from 8% of overall spend to 26% in 2010.
In the first year of the recession, between 2008 and 2009, it was the only spend category which grew in absolute terms, overtaking TV to become the largest single spend category in 2009 – a position it retained (but only just) in 2010.
Throughout the 5 year period, most of the growth has been driven by increased search spend, which has not only grown in absolute terms each year between 2005 and 2010 but has also grown as a proportion of overall online spend – from 56% in 2005 to 61% in 2009.
Expenditure on search advertising grew yet again between 2009 and 2010, by 9%, but for the first time its share of internet ad spending fell – from 61% to 57%. This proportional fall was driven by the phenomenal growth of online display advertising. In 2010, online display ad revenues increased by 33%, driven entirely by the growth in Facebook advertising. Facebook accounted for over 41% of all online display advertising in 2010. Online advertising expenditure across other media actually fell by 3%.
- So which sectors have been losing out as marketers shift their budgets online?
Well, it’s not TV, which has proven to be exceedingly resilient. TV advertising revenues enjoyed their best year last year since 2005, buoyed by the World Cup, and TV still commands 26% of overall spend (compared to 25% in 2005).
The main losers have been newspaper and magazine advertising. The former is down from 30% of overall spend in 2005 to 21% in 2010 and the latter down from 12% to 7% in the same period.
Given the sharp falls in circulations seen by newspapers in particular, these falls in spend are hardly surprising. What is frustrating for the publishing industry is that they haven’t been able to reap the full benefit of the growth in online display advertising as Facebook has stolen their thunder. It’s no wonder that the advent of the tablet computer is seen by many in the industry as a means to claw back not only subscription revenues but ad revenues too.
- So are mobile ad revenues growing as fast as publishers would like them to? Well, they’re growing rapidly, but from a very small base.
Mobile advertising revenues almost doubled in 2010 from £36.7m to £83m but the mobile advertising market ended the year only 2% of the size of the overall internet ad market.
Search based advertising drove most of this growth from a volume perspective, growing by 172% in 2010 and growing its share of overall mobile marketing from 54% to 66%.
Mobile display advertising may be losing share, probably due to the limitations of screen size when viewing advertising on mobile phones in particular, although ads do dominate more page real estate than their PC-viewed competitors. The growth of the tablet market, both through the established market leading iPad and new entrants such as the Kindle Fire may do something to redress the balance.
The other interesting fact about mobile advertising is that its client base is becoming broader. A discipline dominated by the entertainment and media sector, accounting for 66% of spend in 2009, is now much more diversified with sectors such as Finance, Consumer Goods and Automotive seeing significantly increased spends.
In general, Ofcom’s report shows that brands are still probably more wedded to ‘old media’ than perhaps they should be, particularly premium and luxury brands whose affluent consumers are more likely than the mass of the population to be consuming their media online, be it via their PC or mobile device. Progressive brands such as Burberry are reported to be as spending as much as 60% of their on digital – well above the average.
But offline media still has a role to play in delivering impact, tangibility and in being ‘interruptive’ in a way that consumers are accustomed to and comfortable with.
It’s not all about conversion at the bottom end of the purchase funnel – offline media can play a vital and very effective role in driving prospects into the funnel in the first place. The key is to understand your audience, what media they consume and how, understand your product and the best environment in which to showcase it and understand exactly what your competitors are doing. Of course, collecting data on what is driving sales is key – but as you’re likely to be recording only what is happening at the sharp end of the purchase funnel it’s just one of the factors you should be taking into account.
