Like print newspapers, magazines in decline

Dec 17, 2010 by Dirk Singer

Plenty has been written about the decline of print newspapers, less so about the magazine industry. Now South African journalist Herman Manson points us towards the FIPP World Magazine Trends 2010/2011, which “will make grim reading for magazine publishers.”

According to the report while global advertising revenue declined by 10.6% in 2009, magazine ad spend was down by 20.2%. And though this year, global ad revenues will be up 4.8%, magazine publishers will still see their share drop by 1.8%

Two other findings worth noting:

As with newspapers, the Internet is playing its part, with online ad spend increasing from 12.8% of all ad spend in 2009 to 16.5% on 2012.

Secondly, emerging markets are not the saviour of the magazine industry in the same way they are of newspapers. Earlier this year an OECD report showed that while every member country saw its newspaper industry shrink (in the case of the US and UK -30% and -21% respectively), in emerging markets newspaper sales were up.

However, FIPP’s global magazine report shows that in Brazil, a key emerging market, the magazine advertising market declined by 8.5% in 2010 while in China magazine ads are expected to decline to 1.6% of all ad spend in 2012 from 2% today.

Image – Mark Hogan