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Magazines that cater to men have taken a beating lately. So-called “lad” magazines are down, and now auto and tech titles are also losing readership.
Auto and tech titles such as computer and consumer electronics, genres mostly read by men, are losing readers in part because the internet provides much of the same information, often for free. Worse, the audience loss is compounded by the fact that auto and tech advertisers are also shifting to the web, as these categories are particularly well suited to advertising online, writes MediaPost.
Figures for ad pages and revenue, from the Publishers Information Bureau, show that automotive ad pages fell 12.7 percent from January through September, compared to the same period last year. Ad revenue fell 10.1 percent.
Tech ad pages are up, though only by 2.2 percent, and revenue is up 6.8 percent. Most of that, however, is going to mass market magazines from such advertisers as cell phone and home PC companies, which leaves niche magazines in the cold.
Still, a few big auto titles, such as Automobile Magazine and Hot Rod, are holding their own, posting small increases in both newsstand sales and subscriptions. Autoweek, too, is stable.
But industry leader Car and Driver newsstand sales are down 8.6 percent, and subscriptions are down 2.3 percent in the first half of 2006. Ad pages are down 7.7 percent and revenue is down 7.2 percent for January through September 2006, compared to the same months last year.
Popular Mechanics, Road & Track and Motor Trend are all also down at the newsstand, and all but Motor Trend are down in ad pages.
Smaller car mags and other titles devoted to different kinds of hardware are also suffering, including titles focusing on computers and consumer electronics. For example, PC Magazine’s ad revenue is down 12.6 percent, while newsstand sales have plummeted 28 percent. Competitor PC World dropped 10.6 percent at the newsstand.
Not surprisingly, given such data, numbers from Mediamark Research confirm that the audience for magazines covering computers, video games and other electronics is shrinking: the total readership for PC and video game titles dropped from about 13.4 million in spring 2005 to 12.9 million in spring 2006, and readership for computer titles shrank from 10.7 million to 9.5 million.
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