• by March 17, 2006

They may be printed on grainy-looking, inexpensive paper stock and they certainly aren't as thick or anywhere near as slick as their glossy counterparts, but the magazine category commonly known as weekend supplements is hot.

Not only are ad pages and revenue up in the category, but newcomers are jumping into the game, launching new publications to take advantage of an outlet that they view as having untapped potential to reach media-saturated consumers.

The advantages are many, not the least of which is a circulation and distribution model that operates at considerable savings to traditional systems by relying on newspapers nationwide as agents.

Advertisers, too, see new possibilities for the category. In an era when marketers are searching everywhere for alternative media--especially the Internet--companies are realizing that magazine supplements can deliver big numbers for national marketers.

Statistics show that the category is outperforming its traditional brethren in terms of ad pages and revenue, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, which tracks the top six weekend supplements: Parade, USA Weekend, New York Times Magazine, Life, American Profile, and Los Angeles Times Magazine. Ad pages for those titles were up a collective 9 percent in 2005 compared to 2004, according to PIB. At the same time, pages for the overall, traditional consumer magazine category showed only a slight 0.5 percent uptick.

For the first two months of this year, ad pages in the supplement category are up even higher, reporting a 14.6 percent increase over the same period in 2005; in the overall consumer magazine category, pages were up a paltry 0.3 percent.

The category also showed an impressive increase in advertising revenue, reporting a 13.7 percent gain in 2005 compared to the previous year. Among traditional titles, the increase was 7.2 percent. The statistic is telling, although revenue figures are suspect because they are based on published rate cards and do not reflect discounts.

Media buyers say weekend supplements enjoy certain benefits not shared by their counterparts in the consumer magazine category. "One major benefit is that they offer a lot of reach," said Brenda White, director of print investment at Starcom Worldwide. "You get a very big audience. Some consumer titles have a big audience, but the supplements offer a breadth of audience that the others don't have."

She also said the category's weekend distribution is an advantage over other titles. "There is a different mindset among readers on the weekend, and more time is taken with the publications," White said. "And that's something to take into consideration."

Jake Philips, vice president-group media director at Omnicom's PHD, agreed. "One of the best things is how quickly the audience reads it," he said. "It's very different from other magazines where it might take awhile to build the audience. That's why you see direct response in there a lot. You're not wasting any money on audience because they're all seeing it on Sunday or maybe Monday, whereas other magazines take a while to realize the audience potential."

The category once belonged almost exclusively to the granddaddy of them all, Parade, a part of Advance Magazine Group, which also includes Conde Nast Publications. Founded in 1941, Parade still enjoys the largest circulation of any supplement, at more than 34 million and a readership of 78 million. It appears in 350-plus newspapers, only on Sundays, which accounts for a considerable boost in its circulation.

Next up is USA Weekend, published by Gannett, which came along in 1985 to challenge Parade's superiority in the category. Since then, the title has established its own niche, appearing in 600 newspapers with a total circulation of 23.3 million and readership of 47.5 million. Parade and USA Weekend ruled the roost until Franklin, TN-based Publishing Group of America launched American Profile. The title debuted in April 2000 with a circulation of 1.1 million, and today appears in more than 1200 newspapers, with a circulation of 8 million.

Unlike its competitors, American Profile is distributed only in small, local newspapers--most of them weeklies. Its editorial approach is also vastly different from the others, each of which regularly dishes out a heavy dose of celebrity-oriented news along with stories related to diet and health.

American Profile, on the other hand, celebrates hometown American life that is reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting form the 1950s. The magazine is filled with recipes and stories of hometown happenings, and its profiles tend to focus on people who are known only in their own communities.

Publishing Group of America CEO Dick Porter says another advantage supplements have over traditional consumer magazines is in circulation management. By teaming with a newspaper, a supplement is exposed to a dedicated reader base of millions who would otherwise need to be built one at a time from scratch through subscriptions and newsstand sales. For most magazines, the costs associated with developing and maintaining circulation are rising.

"There's a huge savings in distribution costs and paper stock costs," Porter said, referring to the light, inexpensive stock most supplements are printed on. "With the money we save, we can put our resources into content, into stories and the relevance of those stories. It's substance versus style, and readers love us for our substance even if we have a perceived lack of style."

Porter's company believes in the category so much that it recently launched another entry, a recipe-laden food magazine called Relish, which initially is appearing as an insert in more than 300 newspapers with a total circulation of 6.7 million.

One of the biggest success stories in the category is Time Inc.'s October 2004 re-launch of Life, a venerable title that was born in the 1930s, and has gone through several iterations since then. The title took a unique approach to the weekend supplement category by deciding to publish on Friday instead of Saturday or Sunday, a strategy that appears to be working.

The company maintains that the strategy sets Life apart from its competitors, and--combined with its strong brand and heritage--make it an attractive buy. Advertisers apparently agree, and for the first two months of this year, PIB figures showed that the magazine recorded a 35.5 percent increase in ad pages over the same period the previous year, more than any other player in the entire category.

Life publisher Peter Bauer said the title surpassed its projected revenue in 2005, and that so far in 2006, it is running 25 percent ahead of schedule. Media buyers also maintain that another factor Life has in its favor is that it does not accept direct mail advertisers.

"One of the downsides of this category is that there are often so many ads for low-end clients, like collectible plates and things like that," said PHD's Philips. "But Life doesn't have those, so they can offer a more upscale environment." Currently, the title sports an impressive lineup of national marketers, including Dell, Chrysler, UPS, Lowe's, Hewlett-Packard, Citibank, and Merck, among others.

It's not just magazine publishing companies that are getting into the game; two major newspapers recently launched new weekend supplements that effectively serve as brand extensions.

In early February, the New York Times Co. introduced PLAY: The New York Times Sports Magazine, inside Sunday editions of the newspaper. PLAY is scheduled to be distributed four times this year, with additional issues coming in June, August, and October. The first issue carried 50 pages of advertising and 70 pages of editorial.

Earlier this month, the New York Post launched a new, full-color, glossy supplement that was an extension of its popular and much-copied "Page Six" gossip column. Dubbed Page Six Magazine, the 76-page debut issue was loaded with photos and local celebrity dish, along with 38 pages of ads. The newspaper said it was undecided whether the magazine would be published again this year.