Good News: Mag Ad Revenue Grows in September
We're only half way through the month of September and for the newspaper side of the print advertising world its been a tough month. Earning reports by some of the major newspaper companies such as Dow Jones and The New York Times were tepid. The SEC announced plans to investigate the circulation practices of certain key publishers. And more would be doomsdayers predicted the complete demise of the print media industry. But before you start updating your resume in search of a new career there were a couple of bright spots.First, the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) released the magazine revenue and page statistics for September 2004. What it showed was a 17.1% increase in magazine revenue over September 2003. In addition, total ad pages went up 8.5% over last year to a total of 25,165.36. This means there has been a 9.7% increase in total reported rate-card revenue for the year.
Of the twelve categories tracked, nine reported both revenue and page count increases. The categories include Apparel & Accessories; Retail; Toiletries & Cosmetics; Home Furnishings & Supplies; Automotive; Drugs & Remedies; Direct Response Companies; Food & Food Products; Media & Advertising; Financial, Insurance & Real Estate; Public Transportation, Hotels & Resorts and finally Technology.
Of the twelve categories, Technology was the big looser with a 5.6% decrease in revenue and a 7.1% decrease in total reported pages. The technology sector also turned out to be a sore spot for newspapers like the Wall Street Journal which showed a 36% drop for the third quarter. However, technology being the exception, eleven of the twelve categories posted an increase in total rate-card revenue.
Second, in the Business-to-Business (B2B) category, ad pages showed an increase of 3.7% for the month of August 2004 and ad spending was up 4.6% for the same period. Seven of the eleven tracked categories showed overall increases in both ad pages and ad revenue. According to Gordon Hughes, president and CEO of American Business Media, "We appear to be on track for 2 percent to 4 percent revenue growth in 2004."
The figures reported above have been taken from the MPA's Publishers Information Bureau and American Business Media's BIN Report.
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