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Print Advertising in 2013

Posted on Monday, December 30, 2013 at 12:50 PM

In the news: How did print magazines do in Q4 of last year?

The fourth quarter of 2013 was fairly sluggish overall for print magazines. According to the Publishers Information Bureau, print ad pages were down 4.1 percent, and some analysts are predicting similar declines for newspapers. Why the weak performance in the last quarter when magazines had been doing relatively well in the first three quarters? Rick Edmonds of Poynter.org points to year-end budget cuts and sluggish holiday sales as possible culprits.

The news wasn't all bad for print magazines. Although overall industry ad sales were slow, the declines were less sharp than in recent years. Certain sectors, particularly men's magazines, performed quite well. But newsweeklies performed poorly, some putting up ad declines in excess of 10 percent, perhaps reflecting a trend toward digital news readership. Read more about the Q4 data here.

Also Notable

Tempering Digital Expectations

Some publishers have mistakenly bought into the digital publishing hype and invested too many resources in digital editions. That's not to say that digital isn't an important piece of the publishing success puzzle, but it's "part of an ecosystem," says D.B. Hubbard of TalkingNewMedia.com. Further complicating matters is fragmentation on the digital distribution front, with titles scattered across various digital newsstands (e.g., Google, Zinio, Apple's Newsstand, etc.). Read more here.

Top Magazine Performers in 2013

Digital and print magazines alike faced challenges in 2013, but some publishers ended the year on a high note. Hearst posted record-breaking profits, and Atlantic Media saw huge readership and online traffic increases over 2012. Read more here.

Digital Magazine Development

What is the best course for your magazine: a digital edition with bells and whistles independent of your print edition or a digital replica of the print edition? Roy Beagley of Foliomag.com discusses some of the most important components of the digital reading experience in a recent article. Read it here.

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