ABC consumer magazine results: Agency views

Adam Crow, head of print brands, MediaCom

This period’s ABC Consumer Magazine release has reached yet another important milestone with an unprecedented 200+ digital editions being audited and reported for the first time.

Magazine brand publishers still have the option to report whether and how often their digital editions have been opened/read against an ABC metric called ‘Publication Active View’ (PAV). It remains only optional for magazine brands but mandatory for News Brands. Put simply, a PAV is defined as a ‘single copy of a publication actively opened by a device for viewing’.

Whilst circulation is without doubt the oxygen of any print brand, being optional means active-view reporting for digital editions remains elusive. However encouragingly it’s being tackled head on by the ABC, with a PAV feasibility study in partnership with two major publishers. It is recognised that there are number technical challenges and cost implications for both publishers and the ABC alike, but greater transparency and progressive behaviour will only benefit magazine brands.

A number of newsbrands have been quick to spot the exponential value of the PAV metric to demonstrate the net breadth of their brands. Magazine brands need to follow suit or will be in danger of being left behind.

With the economy on a relatively even keel for the first time in six years the air of optimism, confidence and most importantly investment is making a welcome comeback. There have been more closures and casualties than launches in recent years but this looks set to change, with a number of major publishers gearing for launches in ad-funded Freemium space.

There’s no doubt this has been yet another challenging period for many but there are positive indicators on the horizon. The ability of publishers to continually innovate, adapt and connect with their audience effectively will give them the best chance of survival, and with it much needed growth.

All things Digital continue to play a pivotal role in helping magazine brands create and maintain crucial conversations whilst extending their brand reach, irrespective of the platforms or devices they choose to read. Whilst Twitter and Facebook are clearly still very influential, Instagram is becoming increasingly relevant in the social role for publishing brands.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time – Abraham Lincoln.

Mark Jones, publishing account director, Carat

Rather than scouring a 73 page pdf document to get a full overview of the health of the magazine marketplace, logging into the new interactive tables for this data release gives instant visual clues; glancing at the News & Current Affairs sector shows a sea of positive green whilst red numbers dominate the Women’s Weeklies list.

Comparing just these two sectors it’s easy to see why this is the case. Consider that three quarters of both Economist and The Week readers are subscribers yet few women’s weeklies have even 1%.

Contrast how similar the light read snippet style of women’s weeklies is to a plethora of internet content, with how hard it is to find quality long-form journalism online outside of traditional print brands’ sites themselves. Then compare the sheer number of similar women’s weeklies with the lean list of unique news and current affairs publications.

The overall picture shown in the latest data should not surprise us. Cluttered sectors struggling for differentiation remain in a state of flux whilst others who have carved a distinctive niche and found a core audience remain as strong as ever.

The digital editions data reveals additional interesting trends. 215 digital editions are included in this release, an increase of over 30% Period-on-Period but of the pre-existing titles, 48 digital editions have increased in circulation compared to 45 which showed a decline.

Titles showing the largest digital edition decline include Hello, Reveal, Harpers Bazaar and Cosmopolitan whilst the top 10 highest circulating digital editions include T3, Top Gear, Stuff and GQ. Surely this gender split is no coincidence, but does it represent less choice in the men’s marketplace or a divergence in media consumption?

Whatever the answer, I am once again struck on ABC day that we are blessed by the level of data available, and we should celebrate the very real strengths of the magazine medium. The self-selecting audiences of magazines offer advertisers an exceptionally well targeted proposition, verified in a granular way that is the envy of many other media and without any brand safety or viewability concerns.

The way to future success for magazine brands will vary between different sectors but if there is a common theme it is surely their vast overall engagement with consumers, which goes far beyond just the print and digital editions. The ABC can already measure not just print and digital editions, but also events and exhibitions, emails, newsletters, websites, apps and social media though at present magazine brands do not opt into all of these areas.

Once there is an ABC day reporting the full gamut as an overall measure of brand strength then the magazine sector really will be putting its best foot forward.

Emma Cranston, investment director, Manning Gottlieb OMD

In the last period of magazine ABCs (Jan-Jun 2014) we saw a glimpse of light because the overall market (including the digital editions) was up +2.3% YoY. However, the latest release of data (Jul-Dec 2014) we have actually seen an overall decline of -10% YoY, although we are starting to see the decline of magazine circulation starting to slow down.

The older end of the women’s lifestyle market continues to perform well, with all titles posting a positive result on UK actively purchased indicating that there is less migration to digital for this audience – in particular Hearst’s titles Prima magazine (+3% YoY) and Good Housekeeping (+2% YoY) put in a good performance.

Newly launched Forever Sports Magazine (in association with Sports Direct) saw a +47% increase PoP (plus picking up the 2014 British Society of Magazine Editors award) and Women’s Health posted a +3.5% increase despite being in a declining sector. This demonstrates that if the proposition is right then it will prosper.

Although we have seen another increase in digital editions (up +40% YoY) this is from a small base, now sitting at 666k with only 51% of these UK-based. Plus, there is still the restriction that a digital edition needs to be sufficiently similar to the print parent edition for it to be counted.

What we are still lacking in the results is visibility of a magazine’s total reach (website, all apps and social) which would really demonstrate the strength of some of the magazine brands and how readers are now accessing their content.

In particular on Facebook and Twitter, where we are seeing titles which might be struggling in print still have the strength of their brand reputation to be able to boast a strong social reach. For example, Cosmopolitan’s print circulation is down -10.5% YoY, however they have over 1m likes on Facebook and 290k Twitter followers.

We have seen this year announcements from key magazine sales houses (IPC and Bauer) that they are now setting themselves up in a way which easily allows agencies to buy across all of their platforms to reach a wider audience more efficiently. Furthermore, with Flipboard announcing that they are now going to be available on desktop, there will be more opportunity for magazines getting key articles to more eyeballs and driving these people back to their websites.

Many sales houses are recognising that they need to invest in digital offerings (across all platforms) in order to future proof themselves. However, for many titles from a revenue perspective, print is still the bread and butter, but they are being faced with increased overheads (e.g. paper costs). Therefore we are seeing some titles pulling back on these production costs such as Shortlist Ltd who have actively pulled back their free distribution (Shortlist -6.4% and Stylist -8.2% YoY), Whatcar magazine moving to a slightly smaller saddle stitched format and TV Easy merging with What’s on TV.

We are seeing many magazine brands investing in their brand extensions to generate further revenue streams such as Hearst’s Good Housekeeping Institute, Women’s Health’s bootcamps and The Economist’s business talk events. We will undoubtedly see more magazine brands (who have a strong brand reputation) investing more into these brand extensions, not only from a revenue perspective, but also in the hope to drive more people to their print/digital platforms.

This year we will continue to see media owners adapt to the media landscape and will be able to offer a greater multi-platform response with opportunities to tap into reader data and their brand extensions – an exciting time for advertisers.

We are seeing a shift from magazine via a multimedia publisher to a content provider. If the ABCs do not evolve with the times and provide a total reach number which crosses all of these brand touch-points then the less reliant advertisers and agencies will be on their numbers.

Rachel Plunkett, press, radio and OOH account director, Starcom MediaVest Group

Special interest titles seem to be the real winners when it comes to digital editions, with slimming, film, gardening and food all presenting titles with positive digital figures. This raises the point of differentiation and exclusive content. Essentially offering something that readers can’t get elsewhere online for free (i.e. gossip and news) is something that publishers need to embrace if they are to be able to sell their content digitally.

Of course, as with previous releases, the ABC report doesn’t tell the full story – for instance, publishers who fully embrace their digital capacities by offering readers something more than just a replica of the print edition are penalised, as they are excluded from these numbers. Going forward this has to change.

In order to have more confidence in digital editions as a whole, the full figures need to be captured before agencies, and clients, have a much clearer understanding of what is on offer. After all at present the static digital editions can appear to incur further creative costs but still only reach the audience as a ‘flat’ ad similar to the print version – but on a much, much smaller scale than the printed title itself.

Digital editions come into their own, when we can offer clients a dynamic way of reaching their audience, allowing readers to view videos and explore behind the scenes content and click to buy prompts. Until the barriers to entry, lack of impartial audited figures and additional creative costs are knocked down, agencies will continue to have a job convincing clients that this is a space that they should be playing in.