Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Are magazine advertising pages way down?
I get a lot of magazines, and for the last few weeks they seem incredibly thin. The current issue of Newsweek is almost free of advertising. Of 67 available pages, there are only 18 pages of advertising of which roughly half are for pharmaceuticals. There is a 22-page stretch (pp. 23-44) with no ads at all. The last couple issues of the New Yorker have also been very flimsy. Have any of you out in Readerland noticed the same thing? Is this normal seasonality, or is it worse than usual? If so, does it reflect a contracting economy or the weakening of dead-tree media?
13 Comments:
By 
Fire, at
Tue Jan 29, 09:15:00 PM:
I would like to believe that it's magazine people realizing we are sick of advertising bombardments.
But I'm a dreamer...
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Jan 29, 09:41:00 PM:
Ad placement reductions are one of the reliable "canary in the coal mine indicators" of business health IMO.
When things start to tighten, the ad budget in marginal payback venues always contracts.
One of my most reliable indicators over the past years has been the percentage of empty billboards. Empty billboards == poor economy on the way. Full billboards == good times.
A drive from NY to FL is all I ever needed to predict the next 6 months with reasonable accuracy.
FWIW, there are more empty billboards now than there were 6 months ago.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Jan 29, 09:56:00 PM:
1. "normal seasonality"
Magazines are always thin after Christmas.
2. "contracting economy"
A company's advertising budget is often one of the first things to get cut.
2. "weakening of the dead-tree media"
The dead-tree media has been in decline for a long time. The country has about half the daily newspapers it had 40 years ago. Too many magazines to count have disappeared during the same period.
By Christopher Chambers, at
Tue Jan 29, 09:58:00 PM:
When six companies (including your hero Rupert Murdoch) control 85% of what you see or read or groove to on your iPod, wasn't this bound to happen?
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Jan 29, 10:01:00 PM:
CC: I'm not sure what your point might be. What does the concentration ratio in the media business have to do with the number of advertising pages being down so quickly? (And, I note, that six companies does not control 85% of what I see or read.)
By Christopher Chambers, at
Tue Jan 29, 10:47:00 PM:
Sell the ads to pay the investors and the bonuses, pay for moving the money around. From News Corp to Vivendi...its about bucks, not content.
And reading that bizarre cur Michelle Malkin doesn't count as reading. More like "chanting." Or inchanting? hahaha
By 
, at
Tue Jan 29, 11:36:00 PM:
Mr. Chambers,
I see TigerHawk has refrained from answering your last post. However, I shall gladly respond.
You, sir, are a cad.
Look it up.
By , at
Tue Jan 29, 11:45:00 PM:
Chris Chamberpot sounds like a real loser. TH, you say you know him. Does he smoke crack? He certainly is a rude boy.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Wed Jan 30, 12:14:00 AM:
1. "Chamberpot"
Juvenile.
2. "boy"
Racist.
By , at
Wed Jan 30, 12:14:00 AM:
My Car and Driver magazine was noticeably thinner this month. I thought it was just an odd occurrence.
By jj mollo, at
Wed Jan 30, 12:27:00 AM:
If demand were decreasing, wouldn't ad prices go down? That would leave magazines, like farmers, producing the same amount, but making less money for their efforts, and page count, like the farmer's land, would stay the same size.
I'm not sure what it is that actually determines the optimal size of a given magazine. It may be just a strategic choice. Maybe lower ad revenue dictates that they save money by cutting down on content. Maybe the only people who buy mags in January are loyal customers whom you can safely abuse by shorting the product.
The media concentration could conceivably have an impact by keeping ad prices artificially high. If the magazines are overpricing their ad space, then the mistake might be copied by all magazines with the same owner. Or maybe it's not a mistake. Maybe everyone else sets their prices for ad space by following the lead of Rupert Murdoch's publications. That would be like the old aluminum producers' price-fixing technique. Just follow Alcoa.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Wed Jan 30, 01:06:00 AM:
The number of ads usually dictates the size of a magazine or newspaper, JJ.
Remember, newspapers and magazines don't operate in a vacuum. They have to compete against other options such as direct mail, radio, TV, billboards, skywriters, blimps, Google, Web sites, phone books, etc.
By Cas, at
Wed Jan 30, 10:11:00 AM:
Perhaps the influence of NON-dead tree media, including advertising via the internet, is taking its toll on magazines...becasue I have noticed the same trend.
