• by John Gaffney , May 10, 2002

Despite continued talk of a turnaround, magazine ad revenue continued its slump during April. Total magazine advertising revenue closed at $1.5 billion, a 2.5% decrease from last year, according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). Ad pages were 20,317, down 10.8% from last year. However, April revenue increased 11% over that of March. Year-to-date, advertising revenue is down 5.0%, closing at $4.8 billion. Ad pages are down 13.1% over last year.

Apparel and technology led the year-to-year downturn. Apparel was down 548 pages. PIB says that 542 fewer tech pages ran this April. The retail, financial and real estate sector also hit hard, with 343 fewer pages in the market. Among the bright spots: drugs and remedies was up 72 pages and media and advertising was up 62 pages. They were the only two categories to show page growth for the month.

Year-to-date , the picture looks a bit more grim. Once again led by technology and apparel, most every category with the exception of drugs and remedies is down. Technology is down 2,083 pages for the year; apparel is down 1,858. Surprisingly, even the automotive category, which has seen good first quarter sales results, was down 444 pages.

Success stories among individual titles seemed to follow the current thinking that niche titles, especially those aimed at young men and women, are hot. Cosmogirl saw a 32 percent revenue bump over last year. ESPN was up 27 percent and its competitor Sports Illustrated bounced 12 percent. Maxim was up 8 percent and FHM climbed 178 & from 2.2 to 6 million in revenue.

On the down side, tech books got hammered. Wired took a 58 % revenue hit and Yahoo! Internet Life followed with a 51% drop.