• by Paul Gough , March 10, 2004

Business-to-business magazines turned in another lackluster year with flat ad revenues and a slight decline in ad pages.

Ad spending totaled $7.28 billion in 2003 compared to the $7.23 billion recorded a year earlier, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR data released Wednesday by American Business Media. Ad pages fell 3.2 percent year-over-year, from 588,312 in 2002 to 569,405 in 2003. That compares to the steep declines trade publications turned in a year earlier, with double- digit declines in revenues and ad pages.

Strong categories included direct response/classified, retail and home/building. Weaker categories were telecommunications, computers, software and manufacturing and electrical equipment.

"We didn't see much movement" in B-to-B in 2003, Steve Fredericks, president and chief executive of TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, said Tuesday. "And our forecast on B-to-B is not terribly robust."

Results turned south in the first half of 2003 after showing signs of strengthening in the first quarter, when ad spending was up 4.2 percent. Gordon Hughes, president and chief executive officer of American Business Media, said in a prepared statement that the successive three quarters turned out weaker than expected.

Ad revenues rose from $1.93 billion in the fourth quarter of 2002 to $1.97 billion in the fourth quarter last year. Ad pages fell from 146,929 in 2002 to 144,724 in the fourth quarter of 2003.

December, however, was a different story, with both ad dollars and pages up compared to a year earlier.

Hughes predicted ad revenues would grow between 2 percent and 4 percent in 2004, with much of the growth occurring in the second half of the year.

Results from January through November included The Economist, Newsweek, Time and US News and World Report but beginning in December 2003, they were dropped from the TNS Media Intelligence/CMR survey.