While magazine paid subscriptions, single-copy sales and circulation were all down for the first half of 2011, there were some success stories amidst the numbers released from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) today.
The FAS-FAX report on Canadian and U.S. consumer magazines provides detailed circulation data for the six months ended June 30, 2011 and covers more than 600 titles (see below for more detail).
For instance, Hello! Canada saw paid subscriptions jump by 22.4% and single copy sales rise by 13.4%. Moi & Cie saw paid subscriptions increase by 32.6% (though single copy sales dropped by 9.8%).
On a more disappointing note, Best Health saw its paid subscriptions drop by 17.9% and its single copy sales by 23.3%. Numbers also dropped at Fashion, where verified subscriptions rose by 183.7%, paid subscriptions dropped 16.4% and single copy sales decreased by 13.5%.
Our Canada entirely cut out its verified subscriptions from 9,797 in the first six months of last year, and then saw a 20.5% decrease in paid subscriptions in the same time period this year, along with a 23.9% drop in single copy sales.
Over at Reader’s Digest (the Canadian English edition), paid subscriptions dropped by 20% and single copy sales also dropped by 11.1%, though it’s total remains near 600,000.
In an extreme example of number changes, What’s Up: Canada’s Family Magazine dropped its verified subscriptions by 90.5% and saw a 43.9% in paid subscriptions and a single copy sales jump of 492.6%.
In other magazine news related to ABC reports, the ABC is looking to implement changes to better reflect magazines’ digital brand extensions. As Joan Brehl, vice-president and general manager of ABC Canada, told Marketing, ABC wanted to address trends happening as more magazines in Canada and the U.S. are expanding their offerings to the digital platform—especially tablets.
ABC is working with a group of publishers and buyers to create metrics, reports and rules and form a system that shows a “complete picture of a publication’s assets.”
In part, the group is working on a broader adoption of ABC’s existing Consolidated Media Reports (CMR)—ancillary reports to Publisher Statements—for magazines. In March, the National Post was the first to take a CMR to a market in an effort to give a clearer sense of a publication’s “true audience,” including data from several print and digital distribution channels.
National Post’s CMR included not only print circulation for the Post and Financial Post magazine, but also page views at both publication’s websites, mobile app downloads on smartphones and tablets and e-newsletter distribution. It also featured social media measurement from Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
Applying this customizable report to magazines would give buyers a better sense of publishers’ multimedia audiences. Brehl said by the end of this calendar year, ABC expects one or more CMRs for consumer magazines will be in the marketplace (a couple are currently being worked on; see prototype above).
“The Consolidated Media Report is more customizable and allows publishers to tell their story beyond print and give metrics not included in the publisher statement,” said Brehl.
*Here are some of the topline findings on the 69 Canadian consumer titles that reported total paid/verified circulation in both the June 2010 and June 2011 for the first six months of the year:
Total Paid & Verified Circulation
2011: 7,254,788
2010: 7,528,888
Percentage change: -3.64%
Total Paid Subscriptions
2011: 5,501,192
2010: 5,743,384
Percentage change: -4.22%
Total Single-Copy Sales
2011: 1,431,368
2010: 1,465,590
Percentage change: -2.34%
To give some further historical context, here is how the numbers have changed in Canada since June 2008:
June 2010 vs. June 2009
Paid/Verified Circulation
Percentage change: -5.39%
Single-Copy Sales
Percentage change: + 0.52%
June 2009 vs. June 2008
Paid/Verified Circulation
Percentage change: -1.58%
Single-Copy Sales
Percentage change: -8.43%
