Consumer magazines: “The overall impression is of a category treading water”
How is the consumer magazine market really holding up in a post-recession market? Yesterday’s ABC release for January to June 2010 gave a fairly good insight, and showed some successes alongside some not-so-good results.
However, to get a real picture, Newsline asked agency and consultancy experts for their views. MediaSense’s Andy Pearch believes yesterday’s release gives the overall impression that the sector is simply “treading water, with fewer new entrants and a number of household names in freefall”.
Mike Colling & Co’s Jackie Irish said “there have been some serious casualties”, while Total Media’s Pedro Martins thinks digital formats will be the way forward…
The latest ABC release shows that magazines have been struggling to hold on to circulations during the first half of the year. Of the top 100 actively purchased titles, 70 have lost circulation versus July to December 2009, and 62 have suffered declines year on year.
The best performing sectors have been News & Current Affairs, Home Interest, and Women’s Monthly Lifestyle. Circulations in the Women’s Monthly Lifestyle sector as a whole were fairly stable, and showed greater resilience than their weekly counterparts.
Among the sectors that performed least well this time around, Women’s Weeklies, Teen Lifestyle, Men’s Lifestyle, and TV Listings all stand out. Aside from a small increase in circulation for Shortlist , the Men’s Lifestyle market continues to haemorrhage circulation, primarily due to the performance of the lads mags. Whilst this is just a continuation of a longer term trend, the continued scale of these losses really does cast doubts on the future of lads mags sector.
The total market has stayed fairly static, although there have been some serious casualties in some sectors.
Women’s Weeklies have taken a big hit with OK! seeing a large decline… maybe not enough big weddings this year! However, NatMags have interestingly shown increases across all of their weekly titles.
It’s good to see that the Women’s Lifestyle magazines are still a considered purchase. Likewise, Home Interest has continued to make a come back.
In terms of freebies – Stylist is probably one of the most interesting launches in the women’s marketplace in recent times.
The Men’s lifestyle sector continues to struggle, especially the ‘specialist’ titles i.e. Men’s Health, Nuts and Zoo (we all know what they specialise in). The only ones really doing well are those aimed at the older upmarket reader, potentially time poor but available to make time for those things that enrich their lives in some shape or form. Esquire and GQ are great examples of quality editorial that do this and their circulations are testament to this fact.
As online continues to offer opportunities to those seeking information in specific areas (such as health or sex), only products that offer a real cerebral feast across multiple areas will continue to thrive.
While there have been some good performances from individual titles, the overall impression is of a category treading water, with fewer new entrants and a number of household names in freefall.
The sectors in terminal decline are clearly Men’s Lifestyle, Teen and Music, whose customers have long since migrated to the web. Not a great day for Bauer, then.
The quality end of the category is holding up well – Women’s Monthlies and Home Interest sectors have shown growth. This mirrors what market research companies are telling us about today’s UK consumer being more stay-at-home and perhaps rediscovering core values.
There is real volatility within the Women’s sectors. A lot of this is down to the increased prevalence of multi-packs, which are distorting circulations and are becoming an irritant for media buyers. The greatest volatility is at Express Newspapers, posting figures up 44%, up 39% and down 20% year on year, whereas other publishers appear to be ‘tidying up’ their figures.