Decline in magazine land ?

In our day to day activity, one our major goals is to give exposure to our clients. And one of the ways to obtain it is always to place some type of story or mention to his/her product or service in a magazine, specially in a niche magazine that theirs consumers normaly buy and read.

But things are changing a lot in that used to be one of the weapons that publishers used to sell a placement ... the readership.

Currently people is changing their reading habits by accessing online to their favorite magazines ... so, instead of readership, the buzz word now should be total audience.

In february Media Bistro runned an article that talked about Newsstand Magazines are dropping Circulation. According to Folio Magazine Magazines are taking a huge hit at the newsstand. Audit Bureau of Circulations semiannual report showed that newspapers have experiencing steadily declining sales and that a number of high profile consumer magazines took a big hit in overall circulation. For example, only AARP saw a circulation increase of more that 2% ... all the other top 25 magazines showed significant drops in overall paid and verified circulation while others experienced a drop at the newsstand. Here are a few examples:

Time (-17.57%)
Playboy (-10.04%)
Reader’s Digest (-7.64%)
Among women’s magazines: Ladies’ Home Journal, Woman’s World and Redbook each lost 6 percent


In terms of single copy sales, seven of the top 10 showed decreases in sales in the last six months of 2007 versus 2006:

Glamour (-13.24%)
National Enquirer (-15.25%)
Good Housekeeping (-20.71%)
Even Every Day with Rachael Ray (-6.37%) even when it was 133.7 % up in terms of total subscriptions

To access the list of the top 25 US magazines by total paid and verified circulalion plus by single copy sale click here.

Are these bad news for consumer magazines in a variety of categories? we will follow the topic and keep you posted. Meanwhile, check the New York Times for more news on the Audit Bureau of Circulation.