• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 23, 2004

Tech ad spending, which remained a downer throughout 2003, ended the year on an even more down note. Ad pages in technology magazines fell 15.4 percent in December versus December 2002, according to estimates released Thursday by tech publisher CMP Media, a unit of United Business Media.

For the year, technology ad pages fell 13.7 percent, with total ad page volume closing the year at 70,356 pages.

On a positive note, none of the December declines came from "discontinued" ad pages, which represent titles or sections that have been folded, though the full year saw a discontinuation of 351 ad pages, or about 0.5 percent of the 2003 marketplace.

While the rate of tech ad erosion has moderated from the period immediately following the technology industry crash in 2001, the 2003 data indicates it sill is the worst hit of the entire print sector.

Consumer magazine ad pages, by comparison, fell only 1 percent in 2003, according to estimates released this week by the Publishers Information Bureau. Ad pages in the U.S. business press, which includes many of the tech titles, fell 3.5 percent.