We talk a lot about the digital revolution that traditional media is being put through: upheaval, readership and audience shrinkage, bankruptcy, pay walls… This post is a major update to a previous one “Traditional media performance indicators” (20 January 2010), however this one is segmented in that we’ll discuss only magazines in this post. Others will follow to cover individually television, radio, newspapers and other media platforms.
What’s the situation really like in 2011? Traditional media are not dead – not yet, and not for a while at least. They’re not all as strong as they’ve once been, but they still occupy an important place in the media landscape. Let’s look at the situation with Magazines a bit:
Readership & Circulation
- 528,000 magazine readers in Canada in the spring of 2010 vs 527,000 in 2009 = stagnant (PMB – Infopresse)
- 59% trust magazine advertising (North America – Nielsen Online Global Consumer Survey – July 2009)
- 300 million subscribers to various US (HearstCorpComm)
- Ad recall in magazines has gone up 13% in the last 4 years
- 18-34 year olds read more magazines than do the 35+
- The average reader spend 43 minutes with each issue
- -10% in readership over last year for these Quebec magazines : Cool!, Famous Québec, Femme d’Aujourd’hui, Le Lundi, Les Affaires, TV 7 Jours / TV Hebdo and Décormag (PMB 2010)
- 60% weekly reach (PMB A18+ 2009 average) which is less than Internet (71%)
- 57% weekly reach in French Canada
Time Spent
- 38 minutes weekly spent with magazines (PMB 2009 average A18+) or 1% of total media time spent.
- 55 minutes weekly spent in French Canada, 1%
- American men spend 1.7 hours with magazines weekly vs 1.4 for women (8+ years old) (TNS Newzoo BV)
- 8-18 year olds (M2 generation) spend an average 9 minutes daily with magazines in 2009 (vs 15min in 1999) out of a total of 10:45 hours spend with media daily (Kaiser Family Foundation – Harris Research)
- 46 minutes spent reading Canadian magazines monthly in 2010, down from 47,4 minutes in 2009 (PMB 2010) The top 5 magazines in Quebec in 2010 are:
- 1. Qu’est-ce qui mijote? (Kraft) (1 298 000)
2. Coup de pouce (1 225 000)
3. Touring (1 109 000)
4. Châtelaine (1 014 000) - 5. Sélection du Reader’s Digest (990 000) (was in 4th position 2009 and #1 not long ago for the longest time)
- 1. Qu’est-ce qui mijote? (Kraft) (1 298 000)
- 9.1% of time spend with magazines in the US between 2009 and 2010, 22.1 minutes daily vs 19,8 minutes, which further follows the drop of 13% in 2009 vs 2008 (25.4 minutes) (eMarketer 2010/12/29)
- Americans spend 2 hours with magazines weekly in 2010, down 18% since 2005 (Forrester 2010/12/13)
Ad Spend
- 367 magazines stopped publishing in the US in 2009 (Crain’s) (thanks @lucdupont @stevecase @jeffjarvis @iwantmedia)
- 17.5% drop in ad revenue for US magazines in 2009 vs 2008 (Magazine Publishers of America) (merci @tomtsinas)
- The only winners are entertainment gossip, women’s and home & garden titles
- -5.3% drop in copies sold on newsstands in the US in the first 6 months of 2010 vs 2009. 21% of titles dropped more than 20% (Audit Bureau of Circulation)
- STABLE = ad pages sold in the US in 2010 vs 2009. Ad spend went up 3,1% to $20.1 billion (Publishers Information Bureau 2011/01/10)
- -25% drop in ad pages sold in 2009 vs 2008 (Publisher Information Bureau)
- 59% trust advertising in magazines. (North America – Nielsen Online Global Consumer Survey – July 2009)
- 65% of iPad owners are very or extreemly interested in transfering their magazines subscriptions to an electronic version from paper (UM & Time Inc 2010/11/20)
En attendant mes prochains billets pour les autres médias traditionnels, vous pouvez consulter :
While you’re waiting for my future posts on other media’s performance indicators, please consult my previous posts:
- Traditional media performance indicators (20 January 2010)
- Wikipedia, by the numbers (28 January 2011)
- Performance Indicators : Newspapers (15 March 2011)
