Consumer ABCs: Industry analysis

The latest ABC consumer magazine brand release highlights the crucial role the ABC plays in measuring and reporting brand health for print and digital editions. With new total de-duped audience reporting on the near horizon, circulation remains the key indicator of performance and, most importantly, the sustainability of production for paid-for and freemium titles alike.

There’s no denying that circulations of the printed word have been under pressure for some time so the need to innovate is more vital than ever. Cosmopolitan from the Hearst stable has totally challenged convention, arresting decline and actually growing their circulation.

A combination of reduced cover price, targeted distribution as well as branded pop-up events at major shopping malls has delivered this growth. Employing a hybrid circulation model, huge investment from Hearst is to be applauded and may very well become the norm not the exception for progressive publishers.

Last summer the launch of iOS9 and Apple news were creating a real excitement and a buzz around the publishing community. Whilst it was never seen as the saviour of print brands, the hope of 100+ publishing partners was that it would capitalise on the ever growing consumption of news and lifestyle content on mobile devices.

The excitement has been short-lived and for some publishers turned into frustration. A combination of lower than expected traffic figures and basic data reports is taking the shine off Apple News.

Publishers want much richer data more often to tailor content to their audience, all the while ensuring advertising is relevant. Add to this the lack of comScore tracking, and currently Apple News is a harder sell than it should be.

The user experience is far from the best which makes you feel that Apple rushed it to market too soon. Only time will tell if Apple get it right but there’s lots of competition in this space; Flipboard and BuzzFeed are already well established tailored content aggregators. Google, as you would expect, are also getting in on the action, investing in Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Put simply, this is all about delivering content much faster to an ever increasing audience.

This period has also been a hive of activity in the freemium market with the launch of Coach and the complete re-vamp of the long established NME – proof that print brand expansion can be as much about the paper product as it is about its digital extensions.

I moved house in January last year. I mention this because looking at the 415 publications on the latest ABC data report reminded of the day last year when Mrs Jones asked if I would bring home copies of the home interest titles to provide decorating inspiration. Which ones do you want I asked; all of them she replied.

Struggling home with 9.3 kg of paper, it was impossible not to conclude that there were a lot of titles doing very similar things. Fast-forward one year and there are 24 home interest titles in the latest ABC release with 415 publications in total posting over 1,000 entries; arguably the level of competition has never been this fierce.

This ABC period we will once again dissect individual circulation increases and decreases, and in doing so the declines will dominate the narrative. But in such a crowded marketplace it is inevitable that titles will struggle, and on ABC release day this often obscures why magazines are an important medium; their unrivalled trust and attention amongst many other well documented reasons. Glamour magazine losing 5% of their circulation is newsworthy, but it does not make their 346,000 readers any less receptive to advertising.

The sheer number of titles in each magazine sector ensures greater choice and lower prices for consumers, agencies and advertisers alike. But there is a danger, heightened on ABC release day, that it can give the impression of a fragmented, disparate marketplace.

The ABC figures underpin the magazine industry and are of fundamental importance but I hope today that publishers can look beyond their competition to focus on building their own strong brands, and that agencies and advertisers can look beyond the headlines to remember that no result in the data released detracts at all from the reasons why magazines are great advertising vehicles.

On the whole, the latest release of magazine ABCs is a very positive story. The combined print and digital editions consumer magazine Jul-Dec 2015 ABC circulations were flat YoY (-0.14%), however within this there are mixed performances.

Being flat year on year is a fantastic story for magazines which have had a turbulent time over the past 10 years, it is great to see circulations plateauing out.

A key driver of this success is that we are seeing some publishers adjusting their distribution methods; they are putting themselves in front of their audience rather than relying on the audience coming to them. The biggest success of this is Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine which enjoyed +57% increase YoY in circulation.

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Their new distribution method involves copies being available in selected locations for readers to pick up for free (e.g. shopping centres). Furthermore, we have seen them slash their cover price from £3.80 to £1 which has driven their actively purchased circulation up 44% YoY. It appears that these readers came from Glamour and Marie Claire magazine which saw declines of -13.6% and -10.74% respectively.

The success of Cosmo’s print circulation further strengthens their overall brand reach across all of their platforms, they can now boast a global reach of over 100 million through all of their platforms (print, website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat). This demonstrates that they know how and when the Cosmo audience want the content and re-purpose the content to that specific platform.

Hearst is not the only sales house to see success from changing their distribution method, Time Inc took struggling music title NME from a paid for product to free. Also recognising that this is a hard to reach audience, they now distribute for free outside tube stations, universities, shops and music outlets.

In order to do this they had to broaden their content to be more mainstream, although they are reaping the rewards of this now (307k copies distributed a week), it could have long-term effects on their overall brand in the future, for example will the NME awards continue to be seen as the cutting edge gritty awards?

We have seen a lot of change in the men’s market over the period; there was the inevitable closure of FHM and Zoo (this audience doesn’t appear to have migrated to another paid for title) and Dennis Publishing launched a health and fitness freemium magazine called Coach (its ABC will debut in August).

The launch of Coach and the continued success of Forever Sports (up +16.5% YoY) has had a negative impact on Dennis owned Men’s Fitness which saw a -30% decline in its actively purchased circulation. Furthermore Dennis have replaced MensFitness.co.uk with CoachMag.co.uk which could be an indication of the future for this title.

Shortlist continues to lead this market with a 500k weekly reach. On the back of its vast distribution and strong brand it is able to activate brand partnerships that provide the reach, content and expertise that advertisers strive for – a good example of this was the Shortlist and Lynx music event partnership at the end of last year where secret gigs sold out in minutes. The men’s market appears to perform well at the high end or when free, anything else in the middle seems to struggle.

For the rest of 2016, news & current affairs market will undoubtedly perform well as the economy continues to be volatile, plus political events such as the EU referendum and the US election will drive debate.

The freemium market will also continue to do well for magazines, Hearst plan to roll out their distribution model to other titles in their portfolio, they need to ensure they have a specific strategy for each of the titles in order to not damage any of their brands heritage or annoy paid for readers.

As PAMCO continues with the development of the new readership survey (AMP which will replace NRS), we hope to see most titles sign up to the new survey in order to demonstrate their strength across platform against our clients’ audiences. This is especially so for the freemium titles where it will verify their distribution numbers and the audience that they claim to distribute to.