Consumer ABCs: January-June 2016: Women’s Lifestyle

There were some hefty declines in the women’s lifestyle magazine market for the January to June period; however, following a relaunch last year, Cosmopolitan managed to buck the trend and reported a stand-out yearly increase to its print and digital circulation.

The new “pop-up and pick-up” distribution scheme is clearly working well for the Hearst-owned title, with circulation up 60% year on year.

While John Lewis Edition remains the best performing title, the free magazine was down by almost -17% compared with the last set of figures – leaving its once-strong lead in the market looking a smidge uncertain.

With a combined print and digital audience sitting at a little under 476,200, John Lewis Edition is now just 23,000 ahead of ASOS.com.

The biggest decline in the market came from Hello’s Fashion Monthly (-28.5% PoP), followed by Look (-20.8% PoP) and Instyle (-17.6% PoP) – both owned by Time Inc. Look also recorded the largest yearly decline, down -30.3%.

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Conde Nast’s Glamour also performed badly, down -14.3% PoP to lose its sixth place ranking to Woman & Home.

Of the few increases over the period, Hearst UK’s Good Housekeeping led the charge with an 8.6% boost to its combined print and digital circulation. The title was also up a healthy 10% over the year.

The next biggest increase belonged to WM The Woman’s Magazine, up 5.9% PoP and Elle, up 4.3% PoP.

Overall the market was down by 300,000 compared with the last period.