PAMCo: mobile boosts magazine readership

According to the latest cross-platform audience figures for UK magazines (July – June 2019), the period’s top performing magazines are successfully offsetting declines in print with considerable growth in mobile readership.

Conde Nast’s Tatler performed the best period-on-period (PoP) out of both the general and women’s markets, growing its monthly total brand reach 55.5% to 465,000 following an enormous 99.1% jump on mobile, the magazine’s most significant platform.

Hearst’s Country Living also grew its total brand reach (up 31.7% PoP to 1.1m) by offsetting a -3.8% drop in print with a 107.5% increase in mobile readership, while Immediate Media’s Gardener’s World saw its reach rise 28.7% to 1.6m as mobile grew 105.2%.

However, the period was less kind to some other magazines, with the majority seeing their total brand reach fall. The worst performers were GQ, down -29.7% to 1.3m after losing readers across all platforms; Vanity Fair, which tumbled -21.8% to 1.3m following a hefty digital decline; and Mother & Baby, which fell -20.1% to 413,000.

Meanwhile, Immediate Media’s BBC Good Food – the magazine with the largest total brand reach across both markets at 11.3m – dropped -9.4% PoP, despite a marginal 0.6% rise in print readership.

Elsewhere, Radio Times – the second largest magazine readership – managed to grow its reach 14.3% to 9.7m alongside a 24.2% increase in mobile readership, while Hello magazine, which comes in third at 6.9m, was up 8.5% on mobile and 3.9% overall.