• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, July 16, 2007

While consumer magazines fell a few percentage points in ad revenue, business magazines continue to struggle as they enter the second half of 2007. Both ad revenue and ad pages dropped--sometimes by double digits--in the first half of the year. Thus, 2007 continues a trend already established in 2006, suggesting that business titles are beset by a structural downturn.

In the latest round of data from the Publishers Information Bureau--comparing the first half of 2007 to the same period of 2006--Time Inc.'s Finance and Business Network took a special battering, throwing light on the company's decision two weeks ago to replace overall boss Chris Poleway with Vivek Shah, formerly head of its digital operations.

Business 2.0 Magazine led the declines, with ad pages tumbling 34% to 241 and revenue down 30.1%. Fortune's pages are down 17.5% to 1,121, as revenue dropped 10.5%. Spinoff Fortune Small Business saw ad pages drop 18.2% to 236, while revenue fell 20.5%. Finally, Money's ad pages slipped 25.7%, to 344, as revenue dropped by 15.6%.

Although it's probably not much comfort to Shah, other business publishers are also in trouble. BusinessWeek, published by the Nielsen Company (formerly VNU), suffered a 12.6% drop in ad pages to 1,097, with a 7.6% drop in revenue. At Kiplinger's Personal Finance, ad pages fell 8.2% to 262, as revenue sank 7.1%. And SmartMoney--a joint publishing venture of Dow Jones and Hearst SM--saw ad pages fall 12.2% to 310, with revenue down 6.6%.

Suffering smaller losses were Entrepreneur, where ad pages slipped a modest 5%, and Forbes, where they were almost flat, with a 3.4% decline. Forbes also recorded an 8.8% increase in rate-card revenue, although it's unclear if these were discounted sales. The Harvard Business Review's ad pages fell 5.2%, as revenue slipped 1.1%. Inc. held steady with 3.9% growth in ad pages and a 7.4% increase in reported rate-card revenue. Niche title Black Enterprise saw ad pages fall 7.4% to 475, with revenue falling 7.1%.

There is one unqualified success story among the business titles: The Economist. The British import continues to soar, with ad pages growing 13.3% to 1,201, and revenue booming by over 30%, to almost $53 million.