Reimagining Magazines for Data-Driven Times

THE·NEW· SINGLE· COPY
Editor: John Harrington Associate Editor: Eileen Harrington
October 20, 2014
Volume XIX, #10
AA NEWSLETTER ABOUT
PUBLISHING AND PUBLISHING
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ACT5: At the Magazine Innovation Center
The Challenge of Evaluating
Magazine Performance
In preparing for the panel I put together on magazine/magazine media audience
development at the ACT5 conference (see above item), a recurring theme emerged.
Not only is the entire magazine business as we have known it changing, but the
language describing it and the measures of evaluating performance are shifting as
well, and shifting quite rapidly. While this may be understandable, even justifiable,
one effect is that, for those of us who write about the business, it is increasingly
difficult to assess the condition of the business accurately. As a result, the deeper
one get into and adjusts the numbers, the fact is that the business, particularly retail
sales, is in worse shape than we thought it was.
In introducing the subject at the event, I started with the rather unstartling
observation that what I once knew as circulation management was now more
commonly referred to as consumer marketing or audience development. Take your
(Continued on page 5)
Around the Business
Martha Stewart-
Meredith. Cosmo-
Seventeen
Martha Stewart Living
Omnimedia is outsourcing its
advertising, circulation, and printing
operations to the Meredith Corp.,
the published of Better Homes &
Gardens, Family Circle, and 12 other
magazines. Editorial for Martha
Stewart Living and Martha Stewart
Weddings will remain with Stewart’s
company. Reports said that Meredith
will absorb all of Stewart’s business-side
employees….At Hearst
Magazines, the editor in chief of
Cosmopolitan, Joanna Coles, has
been named editorial director, and
has taken over responsibility for
Seventeen magazine as well. As
reported on WWD.com (9/29/14),
speaking about Seventeen, Coles
said, “I have all sorts of ideas for
ACT5: At the Magazine Innovation Center
Reimagining Magazines for Data
Driven Times
By Malcolm Netburn, Chairman, CDS Global
Editor’s Note: Malcolm Netburn was a participant in a program I assembled
on magazine/magazine media audience development for the recent ACT5 program
at University of Mississippi. This was the presentation he originally prepared.
However, due to the unique nature of the conference, he improvised a good deal at
the time. Still, his initial work stands alone and deserves to be delivered to as wide
an audience as possible. The following is a slightly modified, with his permission,
version of what Malcolm prepared for ACT5.
My theme is that the distance between content and audiences must narrow. And
my thesis today is that an important way to do that is through the intelligent use of
what I call predictive data. Of course, it’s not just the data; a media company also
needs to align its culture and approach to make this transformational leap. For it is a
leap that will change our thinking about content, audiences, consumer marketing and
audience development, and engagement.
Our industry is in the midst of a massive transformation. Digital tools and
On the Inside
The Changing Language
of Publishing...Page 6
Folio Survey of CEOs
…...…Page 6
Note: The next issue of The New
Single Copy will be published on
November 3, 2014.

THE NEW SINGLE COPY, October 20, 2014
Page 2
platforms are disrupting every aspect of media, from the
content we create, to the platforms and channels we use to
connect with consumers, to the ways we measure success.
And yet, even in the face of all this change, some things about
the magazine business haven’t changed. For starters, the two
primary ways that magazines make money are still:
circulation and advertising.
This disruptive change is not about the dislocation from
print or analog world to a digital world. There have always
been changes to the form of distribution. And it’s not even
about the changing demands for content. Our biggest
challenge in the magazine industry has to do with our
fundamental outlook and approach to business. And
unfortunately while we’ve been chasing down so many dead
end rabbit holes trying to redirect our industry, we have
neglected the need for this fundamental change.
A Shift of Focus: So what is this seismic change? For
our industry to thrive, we must shift from a focus on
extracting more revenue and profit from our customers to a
focus on enhancing the lifetime value of our customers. The
concept is simple: The more that we understand about our
audience, the more value we can provide. The more we strip
away the noise, eliminate the friction between publishers and
consumers, the sooner we can create an environment where
the magazine and the audience are truly connected.
So, how do we do that? We do that by offering high
quality engagement and loyalty-engendering experiences.
We do that by using data to better understand and support
consumers. And we then accomplish this by changing our
approach to sales and marketing.
I am talking about how to shift our approach to
engagement, and the role that smart data plays in that effort.
With the kinds of powerful databases and data analysis
capabilities we have available today, we have the potential to
build and field fully dynamic and fully personalized
interactions with our customers at the individual customer
level, in real time, millions of times a week, affordably.
But to do that, we will need to do three things:
1.We need to develop and foster a collaborative approach
to data, including new, national micro-targeting models to
help predict and shape media purchasing behaviors. Keeping
our data in silos, only tracking our own activities, won’t be
sufficient.
2.We need to work together as publishers to outline a
strategy based on the principle that we can identify “likely
magazine buyers” and then engage them in a direct, tailored
way across multiple mediums and platforms. Optimization
has a place, but there are bigger, more important opportunities
to pursue.
3.We must be more aggressive about pursuing
innovation, not just for individual companies, but industry-wide.
We have to break down the silos, build operations that
are specifically designed to test assumptions, learn in real-time,
and continuously inform our use of smart data.
How We Got Here: Before I go further, I think it’s
important to know where we came from, and remember how
we got to the place we are today.
Of course, there was Gutenberg. Then the German
literary and philosophy journal, Erbauliche Monaths
Unterredungen, introduced the world to the magazine in the
year 1663. Gentleman’s Magazine arrived in 1731. And in
the early 19th century we saw the first ads in magazines. In
the late 19th century, with the invention of the rotary press,
the number of printed copies increased, the prices dropped,
and magazines began their march towards becoming one of
the world’s leading media.
We first heard names like William Randolph Hearst and
Henry Luce in the early 20th century. The middle of the
century brought us Helene Gordon Lazareff and Elle; and the
first teen magazine, Twen, out of Germany, hit the scene in
1959. In the 1960s, Helen Gurley Brown refocused
Cosmopolitan as a magazine for women. The 1970s
welcomed People. And Entertainment Weekly was introduced
in 1990, around the same time that the rise of the internet first
introduced digital content to the world of magazines.
Fast forward two decades. Mobile devices are the
primary way that people get and share information, and there
are a wide range of apps, eBooks, social networks, and other
tools to facilitate content discovery, consumption and sharing
as never before. Content is delivered in flexible, mixed
distribution networks that actually address the many differing
and changing needs of our consumers.
But even with this explosion in content distribution—
printed magazines remain a significant force in the media
landscape. For all the stories labeled “Print is Dead,” the print
magazine remains vital, powerful and valuable. And value
always generates revenue and profit.
As technology has advanced, all forms of media have
changed: newspapers, radio, television, and even the internet.
But the changes are not limited to the devices used to
distribute and consume media. Consumers have changed.
How consumers behave in relation to media; who they trust,
what they share, when and what they read, watch, and listen
to are constantly evolving. And as different media has
evolved, its influence on our society has increased. Think
about it:
92 percent of Americans aged 12 and older listen to the
radio each week, consuming it at home, in their cars and at
the workplace.
99 percent of American households own a television.
The average American watches more than five hours of
programming every day. And during peak evening hours,
Netflix is streaming so many programs, it uses up to 34
percent of America's Internet capacity.
Social media is no longer seen as a stand-alone set of
tools, it has become integrated into every aspect of business
and culture.
And yes, magazines are also massively influential. Of all
American adults, 91 percent read print or digital magazines.
So tell me, why has the common wisdom declared the
magazine dead? Why have we been told consumers aren’t
reading print magazines anymore? Why have we been led to
believe that print magazines are obsolete because of their
fixed, non-interactive format? It simply isn’t true. Our
appetite for content is not limited to one medium or another,
but rather each medium has its most effective role in
satisfying the consumer. Magazines are thriving on their own
- and in connection with other forms of media.
Why do magazines have such staying power?
Magazine brands are respected sources of content. The
Data Driven Times (cont.)

Page 3
print magazine - ink on paper - has been and is still the
heartbeat of those brands. And the printed version continues
to deliver much of the creative energy that powers digital as
well.
Magazines also have reach and influence. The top 25 print
magazines reach more adults and teens than the top 25
regularly scheduled primetime TV shows. Readership is
consistent across generations, seeing less fluctuation among
age groups than TV, Internet and radio. And consumers are
spending a significant amount of time - 40 minutes on
average - reading each print issue. Oh, and by the way, print
still drives revenue and engagement, in case you were
wondering.
Of course, there is a lot about magazines that we don’t
know. And if we don’t learn soon, we may not have a chance
to learn.
We don’t know enough about how audiences get/share
magazine content.
We don’t know enough about why people buy
magazines, at the newsstand or in the form of a subscription,
digital or print. And what influences those decisions.
We don’t understand how to predict rather than model
existing behavior.
And just to make sure we are all clear; if we don’t learn
soon, we may not have the chance to learn.
What We Do Know: One of the truly exciting things
about the digital revolution is that we now have dramatically
more information than ever before in history about how
people are consuming media. Here is just a sampling of that
information:
We know that people want quick flashes of what’s
happening in the world, the same way people look at Twitter.
We all like to scan headlines and information on any device at
any time.
We know that readers value breaking news and
information, the latest information, the most pressing updates.
We also know that that readers look to magazines for more
thoughtful or engaging information, for context and
perspective.
We are seeing the demographic and psychographic
makeup of the magazine audience changing over time, and
new cohorts of the population embracing media as never
before.
Consumers now have three or four different devices
within reach at any given time, and their media experience
moves from one to the other at their discretion. There is
more media being consumed today, more interest in news,
more sharing of content, than ever before.
And beyond the world of media, the advances in
technology, the new ways to engage with content , they are
re-shaping the path to purchase, across both goods and
services, online and offline.
There are myriad connections between media
consumption and other consumer behaviors, whether its the
purchase of a car or the making of a charitable donation, and
we would be well served as magazine publishers to
understand our influence on those behaviors, and how those
behaviors increasingly influence people’s connections to
media.
It is true, an explosion of data has made it possible for us
to make decisions in real time and to adjust how we apply
resources to talk and engage with consumers. There are more
opportunities to track and measure activity. Yet activity is
only a small fraction of what we need to understand to
succeed. Knowing where to reach our audience, is only part
of the equation. We must consider what different signals
indicate, what stands out among all the noise -- and what
consumers need and expect, whether their clicks tell that story
or not.
To put it simply: The key is knowing who your
customers are, and aren't. Magazine publishers know a fair
amount about their existing customers - but not enough about
who isn’t buying media, or why and that is the crux of the
matter.
There is enormous power for marketers in connecting
customer data between the analog world and the digital one.
Today, we have the ability to view customer information and
activity in an integrated, holistic and increasingly real-time
way across dozens and dozens of touch points. This in turn is
allowing us to create personalized and customized marketing
messages and prompts also in real time. This allows us to
customize, package, and distribute content in unique and
personalized ways, to create deep and long lasting
relationships with current, and more importantly, new market
segments.
And that is just scratching the surface.
We all know there have been some declines in print
subscriptions, and more significant declines in newsstand
sales. Print subscriptions are down 12%. Newsstand has had
a much steeper decline in the same period, 40%. This has
partly occurred as new channels have expanded the ability to
reach our audiences. But it has also been driven, in no small
part, by the lack of, or in some cases the loss of, a feeling of
connection between publishers and consumers.
Our response to this trend has been to focus a
disproportionate amount of energy on converting existing
print subscribers to digital and maximizing short term revenue
opportunities among customers already in our files. To
maximize short-term financial gain, even if it means
mortgaging our future.
That is what most American publishers are doing, that is
the pressure we all feel. And we all understand, and share,
the survival and revenue motivation. Protect what you have,
defend the borders. But it is short term gain at the risk of
long term annihilation.
Expanding Audiences: It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can be looking at ways to expand our audience and find,
or maybe more importantly, create a new audience of media
consumers. That should be our focus and one that we act on
with great urgency.
We have tried countless different ways to optimize the
way we sell magazines - online and offline. Many of them
have been very successful, and either sustained our business
or helped to find incremental growth to offset other declines.
We’ve sold millions and millions of print subscriptions over
the years by tailoring offers based on logical preference. If
you purchased Marie Claire, we tried to cross-sell you
Cosmo.
We have also wasted a lot of money mis-interpreting the
signals that people send out, believing that nominal interest in
Data Driven Times (Cont.)

Page 4
one title, or even an article, was a defining characteristic of a
media consumer..
Not that long ago, maybe one in twenty customers we
targeted online purchased more than one title. With dynamic
up-selling and cross-selling, now one in four customers is
buying more than one product. And we are able to branch out,
to sell books and develop digital continuity programs that are
also sold in the same way. There’s no magic here, it’s merely
the application of long tested and proved analog marketing
techniques adapted for new platforms.
But this ability to continually optimize and create focus
and efficiency within our existing universe of data has limits.
Our continual focus on identifying media consumers whose
behaviors match those of our existing subscribers will only
yield us some of the growth that we want and need. Put
another way, we can’t optimize our
way to future success.
The best consumer and
audience development minds - in
media, and every other industry,
are running out of tricks. They
may not or cannot admit to that
publicly, but that is the case for
many of them. They have
optimized optimization and there
is little more to squeeze from that
lemon.
In their efforts to make order
out of marketing chaos, the people
charged with selling media have
narrowed their ambitions to simply
engaging with surefire customers
who can be targeted with digital. They find their best, most
reliable customers, more directly and cost effectively, by
relying on high-tech, hyper-specific programmatic and real-time
targeting. They reach the people who have raised their
hand, in some way or another, and demonstrated that they are
ready to be sold.
But that’s all they find. In the interest of effectiveness
and efficiency they are giving up on the non-converted. We
cannot continue to make that same mistake.
So what is the solution? What can change this paradigm,
where what made us successful may also contribute to our
downfall?
Predictive Marketing: I believe the big opportunity for
publishers today is in predictive modeling. Use data to
identify new prospective customers based on their interests
and behaviors. Look at predictive analytics as a way to shape
interest and frame discussion that support deeper engagement
with consumers. Find consumers you did not know even
existed. We should not be satisfied with simply finding
potential customers, we should be committed to creating and
shaping the behaviors of new customers.
There are three important elements to this type of effort:
First, you have to collect the widest range of valuable
data, from a range of sources inside and outside the world of
media, to help form the foundation for the data analysis. It’s
not about the volume of data. The goal is to identify the most
appropriate data for the industry, and the desired outcomes
relating to customer/subscriber value that will benefit all
involved. Hard questions need to be answered. Who are the
best partners and sources for this data? What other industries
- health, auto, sports and entertainment, etc. - engage with
customers in a similar way to how we do in the world of
media and publishing?
Second, you must develop the models to identify high
value target audiences as well as explore connections between
media consumption and other consumer behaviors. The
incredible targeting ability available through programmatic
advertising, real-time-buying and other data-fueled marketing
tools and platforms allows us to respond to signals in an
increasingly precise way, to swarm when someone provides
us with a sign they are interested in purchasing media. But we
can also develop the models that allow us to predict which
consumers are likely to purchase media, and determine the
right message, context, and products they will respond to best.
(Think about it: it is possible to know, or at least
analytically intuit, what information, and in what form, a
consumer is likely to buy even
before he knew it himself. Sounds
crazy? That’s what they thought
about the practical use of
electricity.)
Third, you need to identify the
opportunities to engage audiences
and test different methods for
marketing and communicating
with potential customers. Big
data is nothing new to this
industry. But the organizational
structure, the approach to
marketing, and the ways that
consumers are engaged in most
cases has not dramatically
changed.
We need to think differently, organize ourselves
differently, and be disciplined in our efforts to uncover new
potential questions and ideas for how data can be applied, and
develop and test different ways to engage consumers, both
cross-platform, and cross-sector.
There are, of course, sophisticated modeling efforts
underway with most big publishers, but not like this. What I
am challenging you to do, what I am challenging our industry
to do, is look ahead, to look uncertainty square in the eye,
and take big bold steps. And to do it together.
This challenge is bigger than any one company. Each of
us has to be willing to take the first step, and right now too
many in the magazine business are reticent to change. But we
have to remember that we will all benefit by moving forward.
Let’s be honest. We either experiment, aggressively and
continuously, or we will fail. The status quo is at best a short
term survival techniques. Innovation is not about incremental
gains or subtle adjustments. We can’t wait for trends to take
shape in other parts of the consumer journey and then
organize ourselves to respond quickly. The future of our
industry will be wholly different than it looks today - and it is
our obligation to figure out what that means.
This kind of forward-looking, predictive approach
requires us as an industry to work together and learn from
each other.
To achieve a successful shift from such a heavy focus on
revenue to a more engagement focused approach, will require
PAGE
Collaborative Data – Three Steps
1. Collect the widest range of
valuable data
2. Develop the models to
identify high‐value target
audiences
3. Identify the opportunities
to engage audiences

Page 5
a collective effort, across the industry. We need to work
together to make it happen. We need to work together, to
develop a set of tools and plans that will support a
collaborative approach to using data. We need to work
together, to better understand the application of a data-driven
approach to marketing.
Where do we start? As I said
at the beginning, I want you to
remember three things:
We need to develop and
foster a collaborative approach to
data, including new, national
micro-targeting models to help
predict and shape media
purchasing behaviors. Keeping our
data in silos, only tracking our own
activities, won’t be sufficient.
We need to work together as
Collaborative Data – Challenge
publishers to outline a strategy
based on the principle that we can
identify likely magazine buyers'
and then engage them in a direct, tailored way across multiple
mediums and platforms. Optimization has a place, but there
are bigger, more important opportunities to pursue.
And, we must be more aggressive about pursuing
innovation - not just for individual companies, but industry-wide.
We have to break down the silos, build operations that
are specifically designed to test assumptions, learn in real-time,
and continuously inform our use of smart data.
We start by taking a holistic view of the power of micro-targeting.
We start by integrating the data and analysis
derived from predictive modeling into current marketing,
communications, and other efforts. We start by embracing
this challenge, and working together to build the models that
predict the future of print and media, not just the models that
respond to the signals that consumers are sending out. And
most importantly, we start by
working together.
There are no easy answers, but
there is more clarity about the
direction we need to go in. Today
we’re thinking hard about the
future of magazines, not just the
content, or the platform, but the
audience, and how we engage with
them, what we know about them,
and how we better organize
ourselves to provide them value.
I believe a new era of
communications is taking shape. In
this new era, consumers will have
much more access, choice and
interaction, and that will come in
various channels across the print and digital spectrum. And
publishers will not only create even better, more dynamic
products - but we will figure out new, more sophisticated,
more personalized and valuable ways to engage with
consumers.
As an industry, if we collaborate and join our collective
talents and information, I see a bright future for this crazy but
amazing industry■
PAGE
We Must be More Aggressive
About Pursuing Innovation
pick. However, from there I noted that, for many years,
circulation was broadly and comfortably divided into
subscriptions and single copies. Each half-year measuring
period, when the leading audit service, the Alliance for
Audited Media (AAM), issued its Snapshot reports, observers
generally wrote about the direction of each category (more
often that not, single copies were down and subscriptions
were up). Now, it is not that
simple.
A few years ago, some new
columns began appearing in the
semi-annual Snapshot reports.
Sub-divisions appeared under the
“Subscription” column: “Paid”
and “Verified.” Further along on
the page, there was a column
“Total Analyzed Non-Paid.”
There also was another, “Total
Digital Replica,” which was a combined figure of both
subscriptions and single copies for tablet devices. The
Snapshot reports compared each magazine’s figures for each
of these categories for the most recent six-month period
against the figures from the same period in the previous year.
Well, almost “each.” Apparently, since replica was such a
new phenomena, as of yet, those numbers are not compared..
In broad strokes, the health of the magazine business was
assessed using these comparative statistics. Historically, a lot
has depended on whether these figures were up or down, most
notably the attitudes of the magazine advertising community,
which, of course, has been the financial core, for most
publishers, of the magazine business model.
(Note: In our last issue (9/29/14), we featured an article
on AAM’s paragraph 6 circulation, which is the bulk of those
numbers reported as “verified.” The article was written by
Baird Davis, my colleague and sometimes collaborator.)
What Does it Mean for Single Copy Performance? The
only way to break out digital replica is to look at individual
publisher reports submitted to AAM, where subscription and
single copy replicas are identified separately. The New Single
Copy reviewed the statements for
nearly 200 magazines, which
represented an estimated 95% of
single copy sales for audited titles.
When calculated for frequency,
digital replica single copies were
5.0% of all units for the first six
months of the year, which reduced
the total units sold in bricks and
mortar retail stores to 184.9
million, nearly 10 million copies
fewer than we had originally estimated. In terms of retail
dollar sales, we estimated that removing the replica copies
reduced the value by 6.1% to $747.1 million, more than $50
million below our earlier calculation.
It may get a little tiresome, but in our 8/11/14 issue, our
analysis of the preliminary AAM figures for January to June
estimated that single copy unit sales were down by 11.4% and
their dollar value was off by 6.5%. Clearly, if we're trying to
present an accurate portrait of “real” retail sales, the results
were even worse than that. We did not go back to publishers’
statements for the same period in 2013, so we are not able to
Evaluating Performance (Cont.)
We originally estimated that single
copy unit sales were down by 11.4%
and their dollar value was off by
6.5%. Clearly, if we're trying to pre-sent
an accurate portrait of “real”
retail sales, the results were even
worse than that.

put hard numbers on those calculations. However, Baird
Davis advised us that his review found that share of the
digital replica single copies for the most important single
copy publishers increased from 2.6% to 7.2%. Once again,
the blunt message is that the condition of retail magazine
sales is even more dire than we thought it was.
Some Postscripts: Certainly, we are not the only ones
recognizing that the “old” measurements, and the language
accompanying them, of the magazine/magazine media
business are inadequate. That was the message of Magazine
Media 360, the new metric introduced last month by MPA,
The Association of Magazine Media. 360 includes
readership, as well as data for social media, video, and other
digital platforms. At the same time, MPA’s related
organization, Publisher Information Bureau (PIB) will no
longer make public it reports of ad pages. AAM will continue
to report circulation figures for its member magazines, yet,
the same time, it’s CEO, Tom Drouillard, said, “I
enthusiastically applaud the MPA for this initiative.” He
added that, “Census-based circulation is the essential,
foundational metric on which other audience measures are
built.”
I like to use a quote from Justin Smith, then the president
of The Atlantic Media Group, and made at an AAM
conference in 2012. He said, “2005 to 2020 will be known as
the ‘fog period,’ when nobody knew what was going on.”
Apparently, organizations like MPA and AAM are making
initiatives that insure the “fog period” will be shorter that Mr.
Smith predicted. It isn’t over yet, but the sooner it ends, the
better the business will be.■
Some Other Notes on Change: Some parts of the
industry’s language have already changed. MPA the
Association of Magazine Media was, not all that long ago, the
Magazine Publishers of America. AAM, of course, until late
2012, was the Audit Bureau of Circulations; and its Snapshot
reports were called Fas Fax reports.■
Evaluating Performance (Cont.)
Page 6
brand extensions and brand partnerships.” The publisher
of Cosmopolitan, Donna Kalajian Lagani, who is also a
senior vice president and publishing director of Hearst,
will now provide the same responsibilities for Seventeen as
well.■
Some Thoughts on the Changing
Language of Publishing
David Remnick is the editor in chief of The New
Yorker, which I have categorically called on more than a
few occasions, the best magazine in the world. In an
interview on WWD.com (10/10/14), he was asked if he
stood by an earlier statement that he was uncomfortable
with the idea of a magazine as a “brand”? His reply: “The
only reason the word ‘brand’ gets a little tiresome is that
something that is complex and wonderful and deep begins
to sound like a can of tomato soup. I recoil at that, but I’m
used to it.”
Later in the interview, he was asked about his views
on “native advertising.” He replied, “I think advertising is
advertising. If it’s 100 percent clear what it is, then, with
certain exceptions, I can live with that. What I object to is
tricking the reader and blurring the lines so that
unsuspecting readers, thinking they are getting something
that is assigned and edited by the editorial side, are getting
something quite different. They are getting an
advertisement.”
Simon Dumenco is a columnist, one with an
irreverent bent, for Advertising Age. On Adage.com
(10/13/14), his column was “What We Talk About When
We Talk About ‘Content.’” He imagined, somewhere in
the not-too-distant future, a school that will change its
teaching of language arts. “Instead of term papers and
essays, students will have to write - nay, produce -
engaging content. Instead of English Comp, kids will
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enroll in Content 101.” He expanded on his thoughts:
“When I was a kid, nobody talked about words and
pictures as ‘content.’ This’ll sound pretentious (because it
is), but I aspired to work with language and ideas when I
grew up; the notion that creative expression was destined
to be a commodity was foreign to me. (‘Where can I find
the content?’ ‘Aisle 4, next to the stuff and things.’)”
The views expressed above are, of course, solely those
of the editor and the columnist cited.■
Folio Survey of Publishers’ Plans
and Expectations
Based on responses from 230 consumer magazine
CEOs, Folio Magazine reports that change in the business
will continue, but not at a breakneck pace. The full survey
results were reported on Foliomag.com (10/15/14). Some
excerpts from the article follow.
Print advertising, which produced 44% of revenue last
year, is expected to contribute 44% for 2014. Digital ad
revenue’s share will grow from 11% to 13%. Circulation
revenue will remain constant at a 30% share; and, of that,
subscriptions and newsstand will each maintain their
shares, at 19% and 11% respectively.
On the issue of technology, Folio found sharp
differences between large and small publishers. Two-thirds
of larger publishers expect increased digital revenue,
but only a little more than half of small publishers
anticipate digital to grow. Overall, while mobile revenue
is expected to grow substantially, it will only account for a
little less than two percent of revenue for the year.
Not surprisingly, there is little if any optimism about
newsstand. A third expect decline, and only eight percent
look for growth, and the rest see no change. Perhaps
because of the tumult of the past year, double digit
slippage, and wholesaler-closings, only four percent of
respondents called newsstand a “priority” for the year.■
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