Playboy cutting circ, putting emphasis on free online content

Faced with a "revolution", Playboy magazine is cutting its print circulation by 13% while trying new strategies to attract an online audience who wants free content, says a story in Advertising Age.

Instead of obsessing over retaining print readers and trying to sell content online, as in the past, Playboy's brand managers will now try to expand its reach wherever that may be.

Paid circulation is being cut to 2.6 million from 3 million, a 13% reduction, effective with the January issue. That on top of a cut of nearly 5% just two years ago.

"We have a very strong print product, but there is a revolution that is taking place around us," said Bob Meyers, president of the media group at Playboy Enterprises. "There is a very dramatic change in the way the consumer is consuming media."

In the U.S., the rate base -- the guaranteed minimum that magazine publishers offer advertisers -- has been immutable, until recent years when many larger titles have "managed down" their circ. Faced with the mounting costs of keeping rate bases high, publishers have looked for new strategies, particularly online.

"My sense is they're accepting reality, which is fantastic," said Rishad Tobaccowala, president of Denuo Group, a Publicis Groupe unit devoted to emerging media. "Magazines have tended to fixate and look at everything through their distribution window. They thought about the magazine, the physical thing."

Despite a raft of shutdowns from Premiere to Child to Jane, most magazines aren't going away. The business is just being redefined. "No one is going to be in the magazine business," Mr. Tobaccowala predicted. "They're going to be in the content business, of which magazines will be one component."

Playboy.com had maintained a pay wall blocking its juicier offerings, but has decided to feature more (though not all) of the content on its site's home page that viewers can get free.

"We were myopic in creating a gateway that would drive people into a pay area," Mr. Meyers said. "We didn't take full advantage of the fact that there are many other dimensions of the Playboy experience online. There wasn't as robust an online ad business then as there is now. There wasn't the sophistication and the widgets that could help us create a community today."