Why is data about the magazine industry
so hard to come by?
To return to an occasional obsession: where are we going to get reliable data about Canadian magazine publishing? The one source we had, a bit quirky but at least thorough and compulsory, was the Statistics Canada biennial census of the industry.
As you may know, Statscan has (for cost reasons) dropped that system in favour of a "lite" version that reflects the data that is gathered for other industries; it is based on a sample, doesn't query the many small magazines, and contains much less data that is particularly useful to publishers, broken down by size and type of magazine. There really is no other source of such information.
Masthead magazine does its very best, compiling a list of the top 50 magazines, based on rate card information and Leading National Advertisers page counts, but that merely scratches the surface of an industry with upwards of 2,500 titles.
Our U.S. counterparts, the Magazine Publishers of America, commission an annual financial study by the consultants and accounting firm Pricewaterhousecoopers. It is confidential to MPA members, but at least gives some ratios (what proportion of a mid-sized magazine's expenditure goes to production or ad sales?). We have no such data source in Canada. Even there, the sample of MPA member magazines is small compared to the titles produced in the states.
While Statscan could compel compliance, nobody else has that clout.
The most likely to comply with an industry initiative would be smaller, independent publishers with the most to gain. The least likely are larger publishers who consider such data proprietary. Possibly, we don't have such a database because we have only a few large, integrated publishing companies which, while they probably compile their own data and intelligence internally, are unwilling to share it. The argument about it being in their best interests and the interests of the industry almost never gets made.
As a result, we are even now working with Statscan data that was gathered 4 or 5 years ago and it is the last we are going to get in that form.
Is the fact that we don't have a ready, reliable source of market intelligence about the various parts of the magazine industry an indication that we don't need such data? Or that we aren't willing to pay for it? Or that the industry is so fractured that nobody can agree on what seems like an obvious and basic tool? Or some combination of those? Enquiring minds want to know.
As you may know, Statscan has (for cost reasons) dropped that system in favour of a "lite" version that reflects the data that is gathered for other industries; it is based on a sample, doesn't query the many small magazines, and contains much less data that is particularly useful to publishers, broken down by size and type of magazine. There really is no other source of such information.
Masthead magazine does its very best, compiling a list of the top 50 magazines, based on rate card information and Leading National Advertisers page counts, but that merely scratches the surface of an industry with upwards of 2,500 titles.
Our U.S. counterparts, the Magazine Publishers of America, commission an annual financial study by the consultants and accounting firm Pricewaterhousecoopers. It is confidential to MPA members, but at least gives some ratios (what proportion of a mid-sized magazine's expenditure goes to production or ad sales?). We have no such data source in Canada. Even there, the sample of MPA member magazines is small compared to the titles produced in the states.
While Statscan could compel compliance, nobody else has that clout.
The most likely to comply with an industry initiative would be smaller, independent publishers with the most to gain. The least likely are larger publishers who consider such data proprietary. Possibly, we don't have such a database because we have only a few large, integrated publishing companies which, while they probably compile their own data and intelligence internally, are unwilling to share it. The argument about it being in their best interests and the interests of the industry almost never gets made.
As a result, we are even now working with Statscan data that was gathered 4 or 5 years ago and it is the last we are going to get in that form.
Is the fact that we don't have a ready, reliable source of market intelligence about the various parts of the magazine industry an indication that we don't need such data? Or that we aren't willing to pay for it? Or that the industry is so fractured that nobody can agree on what seems like an obvious and basic tool? Or some combination of those? Enquiring minds want to know.
Labels: data
posted by D. B. Scott at
6:00 am
1 Comments:
At my previous company, i spent some time with a Canadian Magazine publishing client consulting on their online marketing strategy, and i realized that this SMB publisher was not using any defined metrics or market data to do their marketing or sales strategy--nor--do they use it in their content strategy. When i tried to suggest that we commission some, they just didn't seem to think it was that necessary.
Now i know that this might just be an isolated case, but if there was a firm that provided these services would the independent and small publishers be willing to pay for this?
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