New data from Toronto’s Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) suggests Canada’s magazine industry is gaining digital readers at a decent clip. The question is, can this growth outpace sizeable declines in print readership?
Released Wednesday, the spring 2014 study is the first to present fused PMB/comScore data showing combined print and digital readership at the same time as the main PMB study. The two have historically been released between six and eight weeks apart.
The new study shows that magazine websites—excluding subscription services like Rogers Media’s Next Issue—generated an incremental audience of 25% across 30 magazine titles in the fused study, up 4% over last year and a significant 15% increase from the fall 2010 study.
“What’s happening is we’re seeing add-on readers from other sources,” said PMB president Steve Ferley. “It’s solid, consistent growth that you can believe.”
The study also shows that average readership across the nearly 100 titles measured by PMB remained consistent at 1.03 million, with the average degree of interest remaining steady at 6.9 out of 10 and average minutes spent actually increasing to 44 minutes from 41 in the fall 2013 study.
“I wouldn’t get excited about that kind of increase, but it does show consistency,” said Ferley.
Converting those digital readers to print-type dollars would appear to be of paramount importance for the industry however, as the report shows that the country’s leading consumer titles are shedding a significant number of print readers.
Among the country’s 10 largest English titles, for example, only Maclean’s added print readers between PMB’s fall 2013 and spring 2014 studies. Combined, the top consumer titles shed 1.14 million monthly 12+ readers between the fall 2013 and spring 2014 studies. When comparing the spring 2013 and spring 2014 studies, the top 10 titles lost a combined 1.59 million readers.
Ruth Klosterman, executive vice-president, strategic resources and new business development for media agency ZenithOptimedia Canada, says that a two-year rolling sample tends to smooth out short-term fluctuations, but the new data captures a downward trend that has actually been underway for some time.
“[Alliance for Audited Media] has recorded a negative circulation trend for three or more years, so it’s not a big surprise,” she said. “Readership takes awhile to catch up because the sample is collected over a two-year stretch.”
A year-over-year comparison reveals that just two of the country’s top 10 consumer titles, Totem’s custom title CAA Magazine and Cineplex Magazine, have added print readers in the past year.
Others, such as Time Inc.’s People, have lost nearly half a million readers (491,000) in that time period, while Reader’s Digest (346,000), Maclean’s (128,000), Chatelaine (219,000) and TC Media’s Canadian Living (211,000) have all lost a substantial number of print readers over the past year.
The situation does not appear as severe among French titles, with TC Media’s Coup de Pouce and Rogers’ L’actualite seeing drops in readership, but not to the same extent.
Steve Maich
Steve Maich, senior vice-president and general manager of publishing at Rogers Media, said he’s not surprised—or concerned—by the print readership declines. “I don’t find [the decreases] worrying at all,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a transition in the way people consume magazines, and I don’t think there’s any question you’re seeing a lot more people consume things digitally.”
Maich said that Rogers has made a concerted effort to eliminate unprofitable circulation, reducing the number of magazines freely distributed to waiting rooms, spas, salons, etc. Those giveaways tend to push a publication’s readers-per-copy number higher, but incur additional costs in terms of printing and distributing, said Maich.
“It’s a perfectly legitimate way of bolstering your readership and it’s something the magazine industry has done for a long time and is likely to do at some level for a long time to come, but at Rogers we’ve scaled back significantly on that type of circulation and concentrated more on paid subscribers,” he said. “It represents an opportunity to scale back and concentrate on a different form of readership.”
While digital represents a small percentage of the overall circulation for Rogers titles, Maich said he is “really encouraged” by the growth of its new Next Issue subscription service, which provides access to more than 100 Canadian and U.S. titles for a monthly fee.
Rogers has not publicly disclosed how many people have subscribed to the service, but Maich said consumer adoption has met expectations. “It’s right on our business plan, which is terrific,” he said. “We’ve been really encouraged by what we’re seeing there.
“It represents a terrific lift for brands—more reach, more circulation, more readership,” he added. “It’s going to represent a really significant part of the future for the industry for sure.”
The key for magazines is how successfully they can navigate the transition from print to digital, but Maich said he’s optimistic about where the industry is headed.
“From a cold-hearted business perspective, digital gets us away from a lot of the entrenched costs that represented a hurdle to investment and growth in the print platform,” he said.
“When I look down the road, I see a magazine industry that is really robust and dynamic. We need to go through a period of transition to get there, and it may be possible that we need to take a step back in order to take three or four steps forward… but once we get through that journey we’ll end up in a much better place.”
In response to member requests, PMB is also bolstering its semi-annual study with reader engagement and path-to-purchase data. That research is currently in field, and will appear in the spring 2015 study, said Ferley.
Top 10 titles by Readership
English
1. Reader’s Digest – 4.87 million
2. Canadian Living – 3.62 million
3. What’s Cooking – 3.52 million
4. Canadian Geographic – 3.48 million
5. Chatelaine – 2.95 million
6. Cineplex Magazine – 2.84 million
7. People – 2.83 million
8. CAA Magazine – 2.61 million
9. Maclean’s – 2.28 million
10. Food and Drink – 2.17 million
French
1. Touring (French and English) – 1.24 million
2. qu’est-ce qui mijote – 1.21 million
3. Coup de Pouce – 1.14 million
4. Le Journal de Montreal (Sat.) – 973,000
5. L’actualité – 937,000
6. Le Journal de Montréal (M-F) – 887,000
7. Châtelaine – 849,000
8. Le Journal de Montréal (Sun.) – 782,000
9. RICARDO Magazine – 742,000
10. ELLE Québec – 694,000
