The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has released its semiannual FAS-FAX report on U.S. consumer magazines, covering July to December 2011.
The champion among subscriptions: AARP [American Association of Retired People], The Magazine, with 22.4 million subscribers, closely followed by AARP: The Bulletin, with 22.2 million. But, these publications are benefits of AARP membership, with its 50+ demographic. Only two other titles in the list are membership-based, being AAA Living and American Legion Magazine.
Excluding those, Better Homes and Gardens tops the list, with 22.2 million subscribers—down just a hair from 2010. BHG (a Meredith title) claims a monthly readership of 38.33 million readers, 30.28 million of whom are women.
There is likely very little crossover in demographics between BHG and #4 on the list—Game Informer, covering the interactive gaming market. Publisher Sunrise Publications offers no insight into its demographics (which presumably reflects those of gamers, being largely male and under 30).
10% downtick at newsstands
Still, single-copy sales were down 9.96% during the period, which Media Life called the “steepest slide in the last four reporting periods.” Single-copy sales across 408 consumer titles dropped from 32,118,948 in the latter half of 2011 to 28,919,153. They were down 9.15% during the first half of 2011, and down down 7.27% latter 2010.
Ad pages were down in 2011 as well, and consumers likely cut back on impulse buys, particularly of celebrity titles like OK!. Newsstand sales of OK! plummeted 27.5%. Women’s titles suffered as well, with Oprah Winfrey’s O down 32%.
Still, publishers are pushing valiantly into the digital space—a good move: According researchers GfK MRI, almost three-quarters (71%) of tablet owners say they are interested in reading magazines on their devices. Publishers are not surrendering on the newsstands, either. Yesterday marked the launch of a revamped Ladies’ Home Journal, (12th among paid subscriberships in latter 2011, absent from the top 25 in newsstand sales). In addition to a new look and logo, the new content creation model invites readers for a stipend to submit personal growth stories—ostensibly for a more engaged readership.
Research: Three Formats Dominate Online Ad Spend
While the U.S. online ad spend will approach $40 billion in 2012, just three formats will dominate that spend, forecasts eMarketer: search, banners, and video adverts. Those three formats will capture 80% of the online ad spending through 2016.
Search will dominate, hovering just below 50% for the next five years, though it will lose some ground to online video; that format will see the highest persistent growth in spending, and will nearly double in percent of total spend from 7.9% in 2012 to 15% in 2016. Banners will retain their #2 status, with 23.4% share of total spend in 2012, and 20.5% in 2016, also losing ground to video ads.
Video ads are expected to grow by 55% in spending this year, after a healthy growth of 42.1% in 2011. That growth (the highest in a single year through 2012) is fueled in part by the 2012 election and summer Olympic Games. (Consider the PAC and campaign ads you’ve seen already.)
Each of these three formats fits nicely into the mobile format, and mobile display ads (chiefly banner and video) are expected to grow by 93.5% to $861.7 in 2016.
eMarketer has projected that U.S. online ad spending will grow 23.3% in 2012 to nearly $40 billion, and nearly $53 billion in 2013. This will make 2012 the first year in which online ad spends will surpass the total spent on print ads, with $39.5 billion online versus $33.8 billion in magazines and newspapers.
Analysts: 2012 Ad Spends to be “Decent” In TV, Digital, Down in Magazines
Ad Age is predicting a pretty good, if not stellar 2012 in which digital and TV spends will be up, but magazines down.
Vincent Letang, who is executive VP and head of global forecasting at Magna Global, attributed what growth there will be—about 10.9% across all media—largely to 2012 being both an Olympics and an election year. Without them, “Some would have predicted probably a worse outlook” for 2012. But with those two powerful drivers, TV ad revenue should increase by 6.8% this year. Time will tell, with upfront spending just getting going. Thusfar only General Motors (GM) has canceled upon a significant percent of its commitments, at just shy of 50%.
TV ad revenue should increase 6.8% this year, once again, attributable once election season and the Olympics have their effect, according to Magna Global's forecast on Jan. 23. The past several weeks have been strong, but the second-quarter scatter market will ultimately provide the best indication for upfront spending, said Mel Berning, exec VP-ad sales at A&E Networks.
Ad pages fell about 8.4% in January and February issues, year-over-year (YOY), and magazines overall can expect a 5.2% decline in 2012 ad revenue, Magna Global predicts. But there are signs of health in the digital quarter, with at least one media provider (Complex Media) projecting firth-quarter revenues doubling over Q4 2012. So while print journals will see a decline, their digital properties—and they all have them—are likely to help them tread water.
comScore Data: Newspaper Websites Gaining, Holding Interest
Newspaper websites in Q4 2011 averaged more than 111 million monthly unique visitors (MUVs), up by more than 6 million compared to the same period in 2010, reports the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), citing comScore data. Fully 63% of adult Internet users visited newspaper websites.
A comarison of newspaper website usage data year-over-year (YOY) revealed that average daily visitors increased by more than 3 million, or nearly 15%. Unique visitors increased nearly 6%, while total minutes increased 14%.
The comScore data demonstrate “The growing appeal of newspapers’ online content,” said NAA President and CEO Carolline Little, “particularly for engaged, informed and affluent users whom advertisers…seek to reach.” As Little described, 70% of Internet users with household income (HHI) above $60,000 are reached by newspaper websites, and 75% when looking at HHI above $100,000.
Other key findings about Q4 2011: Among people 45 to 54, newspaper website percentage reach climed to 67%. In the 18 to 34 demographic, website reach remained at or above 60%.
Newspapers are answering these numbers with a steady stream of what NAA calls “innovative strategies designed to maintain and build their digital audiences.” For example, the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. launched animated editorials, and the New York Times launched a fashion-focused niche app.
“During all of 2011, the percentage reach of Internet users enjoyed by newspaper websites never dipped below 61 percent,” Little said. “Web-based and other digital platforms at newspaper are capturing—and holding—attention in the marketplace.”
Signs of hope
Editor & Publisher described 2011 as “the lowest point yet” for newspaper ad revenue," with 2011 revenues of $24 billion, down from the record high $49.4 billion in 2005. E&P observed that, however important a digital strategy appears to be, it has yet to fulfill its potential in newspaper revenue. “Sure, digital advertising climbed 8.3%, but digital still contributes only 14.3% to overall publisher revenue. But the newspaper industry is clearly aware of the trend, and 2012 will likely see the digital contribution approaching 17%. E&P opined that newspaper must compete on content, and the papers are treating apps, animation and streaming video as exactly that—content—if not the content they are used to providing.
Prepare for HuffPost Streaming Network
The online journal Huffington Post and owner AOL will launch a video-streaming network between Q2 and Q3, with 12 hours of programming running five days a week.
Journalist and founder Arianna Huffington announced the network yesterday in an enthusiastic post on her website, nicknamed “HuffPo.” As she described, AOL had acquired HuffPo a year ago this week. HuffPost Streaming Network will be overseen by founding editor Roy Sekoff and will sit on every available platform, including desktops, smartphones, tablets and “over-the-top TV,” that is, off network. “We won't be limited by the usual time constraints of TV,” claims Huffington.
While the network will launch with 12 hours of programming, HuffPo plans to increase that to 16 hours by end-of-year 2013. Sekoff described plans for a “never-ending talk show,” and plans to post 30,000 clips during the first year, writes WWD. Content will “emulate the online experience,” writes Huffington, with its impressive—albeit largely unqualified—statistics. Huffington claimed in her announcement the site has 36.2 million unique visitors a month, where its advertising section claims 28. Huffington further claims 253,331 new comments on a single day (January 25 2012) and 1.4 million Facebook referrals.
The Huffington Post advertiser section appears both on its site and on AOL, and enthuses to advertisers that it is “Breaking the news—and the mold.” HuffPo offers only vague statements about its demographic. Their breakdown of their reach:
- 12.8M women every month, who HuffPo reminds advertisers “control 85% of household spending”
- HuffPo visitors are “more likely to have a [household income] of over 150K than average internet users”
- “More likely to have a post-graduate degree than average internet users”
- “More likely to be business decision-makers than average internet users”
Millennials Trust Digital Word-of-Mouth Over Advertising
Perhaps Facebook’s estimation of its buying influence is not exaggerated after all. eMarketer reports that “Millennials,” who are now aged 18 to 34, widely use and create online content to recommend or dissuade each other in brand, product or service purchases. Fully 49% of millennials will rely upon anonymous, user-generated content from third-party websites (51%) to influence a buying decision, and presumably, will not question the source of that content. The remaining 49% relies upon friends and family, while 67% of baby boomers (aged 47 to 65) do the same.
What millenials rely upon far less is advertising, branding, or a company’s website. The upshot for brands is that they need to be transparent, says Lisa Pearson, VP of global marketing at Bazaarvoice, the company that provided the data. They need to understand that “There’s a huge group of consumers right now who just don’t trust them.”
As to where they relate their own positive experiences, 42% prefer to do so on social media, versus just 17% among baby boomers. Sixteen percent of boomers will call a company directly, versus just 4% of millennials.
Wall Street Analyst: Big Media Will Protect Its Turf, Continue to Grow
YouTube, Apple and Netflix are not the inevitable future of media, says a Wells Fargo Securities analyst. As a Deadline New York story describes, Marci Ryicker, who covers broadcasting and pay TV for Wells Fargo, has charted diversified media for six months and writes that there is enough evidence to prove that diversified media is healthy, and that “MUST-HAVE content WILL be monetized, and that there is still significant growth in this business.” Ryvicker believes that CBS, News Corp and Time Warner will outperform the market and Disney and Viacom will keep pace.
One way in which those broadcasters and cable companies will compete is by making their content available in the mobile spaces of their choosing, for example, TV Everywhere. This mobile platform makes cable content available on mobile devices, but only to subscribers. That is one of the reasons big media will stay strong, believes Ryvicker: programmers are protecting long-term monetization by protecting their content. Consider Viacom’s back-and-forth suit with Google, aimed at keeping its content from being posted free to YouTube by third parties. This is why you’ll find no “South Park” episodes on YouTube any longer.
Ryvicker believes that Netflix is “not strong enough to significantly disrupt the current ecosystem,” even with original programming like its gangster drama “Lilyhammer.”
“The Economist” Banks that China Section Will Draw Readers, Advertisers
Beginning with this week’s issue, The Economist will run a section devoted entirely to China. This is only the third time in 170 years that the magazine has created a country-specific section. But as Editor in Chief John Micklethwait told Audience Development, “China is getting so large that trying to constrain it in a section like geo-politics was difficult.”
China is a broadly-interesting topic, Micklethwait believes, affecting the magazine’s entire global readership. The British-born magazine took the same stance during WWII with its still-existing U.S. section.
Circulation of The Economist within China is a miniscule 3,740, and Micklethwait is not counting on it growing; rather, he is counting on it increasing readership long-term in the U.S., among “That group [that] wants to know more about China than what they’re being told.”
In addition to mainstream business and politics, The Economist has reporters on the ground to cover rural life, social changes and emerging trends.
The Economist claims a 2011 circulation of 1,486,838, and a modest year-over-year growth of 3.03%. But Omniture clocked the digital edition with a swift 7,610,593 unique visitors in December 2011, and 34,124,539 page views.
Twitter “100% Focused on Advertising” Says CEO
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said yesterday that while the company is tempted to pursue e-commerce and brand-sentiment analytics, it is focused near-term on its ad products, reports Ad Age.
Costolo was speaking at All Things D's media conference on Monday night. As tempting as it is to produce a slew of related products, Costolo said the company does not need to add more components to its business. Rather, “We just need to scale it up" he said, referring to the ad business. He went on to describe the company’s strategy of increasing the number of advertisers, and expansion into geographic markets.
At present, Twitter offers a streamlined ad inventory, which has most of that functionality. The portfolio includes:
- Promoted tweets that appear in search results, and in target geographies
- Promoted trends, currently in beta, placing advertisers alongside discussion strings
- Promoted accounts, which appear at a premium in Twitter’s “Who To Follow” suggestions
- Enhanced profile pages, visible without logging into Twitter; in use by just a few invited companies (like Coca-Cola and Virgin Atlantic, depicted below), but reportedly available to all brands as of February 1
- And Advertiser Analytics, three dashboards depicting campaign metrics like total impressions, retweets, replies and follows.
Costolo ducked the question about the Enhanced Profile price—is it truly $25,000? But with prompting by a reporter/interviewer, Costolo described the price as seeming “Perfectly reasonable.” Enhanced profiles enable rich background graphics, embedded video and guided promotions, versus the simple 140-word "micro-blogs" available at no cost.
Nevada GOP to Bypass AP and Release Caucus Results on Twitter, Google
The Nevada Republican Party will release real-time caucus results on February 4 via Google and Twitter, reports The Poynter Institute. The Iowa Republican Party also worked with Google earlier this month for its caucus, and Google released the rolling counts—the way the Associated Press (AP) usually does. Google will release the results on a Google Map on the Nevada Republican Party’s website.
Starting at 8pm EST, the Nevada GOP will also tweet statewide totals from @nvgop, and will release precinct-level results that developers can access via the Twitter API.
As Poynter describes, the AP has “prided itself” on being the source for immediate polling results in every state and national election, but this is the second instance in a month that “a new publishing platform is upending the old order.”
That said, the AP is more practiced, and there is something to be said for less immediate results. In Iowa, news outlets using Google results versus AP’s were slightly ahead in reporting the results and declared Mitt Romney the winner; but AP held off releasing results until it was certain every precinct had been counted in the tight race. Rick Santorum took the race in a recount.
AP spokesman Paul Colford said the organization welcomes Google and Twitter to the political-reporting arena, but welcomed them guardedly. Colford wrote, “AP has assured its members and subscribers that we will strive to exercise the quality control with the Nevada numbers that is the hallmark of our election services and work with the GOP and Twitter to help ensure the accuracy of the results as we report them.”