January 25, 2023
PIB: Ad Pages Tumble 26% In 1Q
- by Erik Sass @eriksass1, April 15, 2009
Consumer magazines
took it on the chin in the first quarter of 2009 -- with ad pages plunging to 37,196 compared to 50,170 in the same period in 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. That's a
year-over-year decline of just under 13,000, or 26%. Magazine rate card revenue fell 20.2% to $4.2 billion. This figure is especially ominous considering these revenue figures are often inflated, due
to big discounts that publishers offer to advertisers in private. The losses came across the board, in all the major magazine categories, including celebrity weeklies, shelter, lifestyle, food and epicurean, enthusiast, and auto mags. Many titles experienced losses of over 30%.
In alphabetical order, the biggest losers included Architectural Digest (down 47.2%), Automobile Magazine (39.2%), Autoweek (34.7%), Boating (47.4%), BusinessWeek, (39.8%), Conde Nast Portfolio (60.9%), Conde Nast Traveler (33.3%), Dwell (36.4%), Entertainment Weekly (37.5%), ESPN Magazine (31.8%), Food & Wine (30.2%), Gourmet (40%), GQ (32.4%), In Touch Weekly (37.4%), Inc. (46.7%), Life & Style Weekly (51.4%), Lucky (35.1%), Martha Stewart Living (37%), Men's Journal (33.9%), Motor Trend (31.9%), Motorboating (42.5%), New York (39.5%), The New Yorker (35.7%), Real Simple (34.1%), Road & Track (32.3%), Runners World (34.5%), Southern Accents (35%), Southern Living (33.5%), Spin (39.3%), Teen Vogue (41.2%), and Town & Country (36.2%).
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These steep losses reflected big cuts in major advertising categories. Drugs and remedies saw ad pages fall 13%, food and food products 22.8%, apparel and accessories 23.7%, retail 34%, automotive 47.5%, and financial, real estate and insurance 45.7%.
Separately, TNS Media Intelligence released its Group Publishers' Report, which sums total ad pages for the big magazine publishing groups, giving some idea of corporate health.
In the first three months of 2009, Conde Nast's ad pages are down 31% compared to the first quarter of 2008; Time Inc.'s ad pages are down 23.8%; Hearst is down 25%; Bonnier is down 22.4%; Hachette Filipacchi is down 25.2%; and Meredith is down 12.4%.
I take issue with the strictly negative angle of this article and its complete lack of analysis. Sure, the grim news is important but it's not the entire story, for example:
1. Overall decline is largely driven by the Automotive and Financial categories. Factoring them out, what would the decline of the remaining categories be? Sure, it will still be significant but it should have been pointed out.
2. You make no mention of publications with smaller declines - or even gains. Perhaps that's an even bigger story. And why an alpha listing of magazines (a selective list at that)? It makes more sense to rank by largest decline to smallest. Don't make your readers do this work.
3. And although it was listed, you should have pointed out Meredith's smaller decline. Instead, it's just buried in your list of publishers.