Association of [U.S.] Magazine Media moving from New York, shiftng emphasis to lobbying in DC

MPA — The Association of Magazine Media, the nonprofit trade group that represents around 75 of the largest consumer magazine publishers in the U.S., as well as suppliers and other industry stakeholders, is leaving New York after 100 years and relocating its headquarters to Washington, D.C., where it has long operated a government affairs office. 

The move is intended to put the emphasis on D.C.-based advocacy work around issues such as postal, ad tax, consumer privacy, the First Amendment and data and subscription marketing. Ten full-time and two part-time staffers at the New York office will be laid off according to a story in the New York Post. 

Susan Russ, the MPA's senior VP of communications, told Folio:. "This work contributes directly to our members' bottom lines." As such, Linda Thomas Brooks, the former ad agency exec who was brought in as CEO at the start of 2016, will step down from her role and leave the MPA at the end of the year, and the association has no plans to name a successor. 

Instead, the MPA's most senior staffer going forward will be Brigitte Gwyn, executive VP of government affairs, an experienced K Street lobbyist who joined the association earlier this year and will continue running its D.C. office. The MPA has spent between $500,000 and $650,000 on lobbying activities annually over each of the past several years, according to public records. 

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), which shares resources with the MPA and administers the annual National Magazine Awards in association with the Columbia School of Journalism, will remain based in New York but will maintain a relationship with the MPA moving forward.

"ASME anticipates no changes in the operation of the awards," says ASME's CEO, Sid Holt. "As in the past, the call for entries will be published in October, the judging will take place at Columbia in January and the awards will be presented in March."

Decisions related to the future of the MPA's regularly released audience reports as well as its series of in-person events, including the annual American Magazine Media Conference in New York each February and the IMAG Conference, held in various locations each spring, will be made over the next six months, but Russ says the association plans to maintain "at least one industry conference with other meetings throughout the year."

Total audience for U.S. consumer magazines up 12.6% last year

92.8 million gross audience

Gross audience for U.S. consumer magazines  - total print and online - increased 12.6% between February 2014 and February 2015, according to figures released by the MPA -- The Association of Magazine Media. Audience growth was driven largely by increases in the total video audience, which rose 18.7%, and magazines’ mobile audience, which soared 78% compared to the year before, according to a story  in MediaDailyNews. Mobile readers increased from 14% of total audience to 22%.

The list of magazines with the biggest gross audiences was led by ESPN The Magazine, with a gross audience of 92.8 million in February 2015, due to its combination of Web (25.4 million), mobile (40.3 million), and video (11.8 million) audiences. In second place was People at 85 million. With a strong performance across digital channels, it also boasted a print audience of 44 million.  

Better Homes and Gardens came in at third place with a gross audience of 49.1 million. Forbes was in fourth place with a gross audience of 45.7 million, followed by Time at 44.8 million and AARP at 44.4 million.

MPA unveils new metrics and stops counting print ad pages

The Association of Magazine Media (MPA) in the U.S. has launched a new report called Magazine Media 360 which promises to capture unduplicated average consumer readership across multiple platforms, including print, digital editions, websites and video. Essentially, the MPA is abandoning the measurement of print by ad sales and circulation as its yardstick and 30 of the largest companies such as Condé Nast, Time Inc. and Hearst Magazines, publishing 147 of the major titles in the industry have signed on the the new service.

(Not coincidentally, the measurement of monthly and weekly ad page counts and circulation figures published for almost 70 years in the Media Industry Newsletter is being discontinued and MPA will no longer provide ad data from the Publishers Information Bureau free on its web site. Media reporters will have to pay for it.) 

The new approach relies not on audited information but on sampling of GfK MRI's Survey of the American Consumer, combined with unique visitors data about web traffic, mobile web and video measured by third parties such as comScore Media Metrix, Ipsos, comScore, Nielsen Online, Nielsen NetView and a separate social media report from SocialFlow to come out next month detailing numerical changes from month to month in each brand's Facebook likes and Pinterest, Google+, Instagram and Twitter followers.

“With Magazine Media 360, we finally have a comprehensive accounting of consumer demand for our brands, an imperative for the industry since, with the growth of new, rapidly evolving digital platforms, consumer demand is today’s media currency,” said MPA CEO Mary G. Berner in her presentation to the industry. “In fact, given the success of many magazine brands on those new platforms, continuing to rely on print circulation and ad paging counts in isolation to determine demand for magazine media would be like measuring the viewership of the Super Bowl exclusively based on the people who watched it in the stadium.”

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Hold on a minute, says MPA of AAM circulation first-half circulation figures

The Association of Magazine Media (MPA) takes issue with the gloomy first half circulation Snapshot published by the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), noting that the tally includes only a third of total magazine audience and tracks only a small number of newsstand titles. A statement issued by Mary G. Berner, the president and chief executive of the MPA (the principal U.S. magazine industry association) says 

"Despite what is going on in newsstand, the audience for print plus digital editions (excluding online) increased by +3% from Spring 2013 vs. Spring 2012 (GfK MRI) for titles common to both studies."

The statement went on to say that a preliminary analysis of the AAM's Snapshot shows:

• Almost a third (30%) of the titles (177 of 390) titles saw an increase in total circulation
• More than half (56%, or 217 titles) posted an increase in subscriptions
• Slightly less than a quarter (23%, or 91 titles) showed gains in single copy sales

Magazine Publishers Media: but then "publishing" is so yesterday

The new logo

The Magazine Publishers of America, the U.S. trade association for magazines, is dropping the word "publishers" from its name and will henceforth be called MPA -- The Association of Magazine Media. The  change, announced in a press release, coincides with the MPA's annual American Magazine Conference in Chicago starting Monday. 

The MPA is also adopting a new logo (illustrated above) that drops the classic "turning page" symbol with two rather lame, rectangular frames that appear horizontally and vertically (see above) around the letters MPA.

The old logo

"MPA is underscoring the fact that magazine media content engages consumers across multiple platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, books, live events and more," the release said. "
“Magazine media companies are rapidly embracing cross-platform business models that incorporate print, digital and other ways of providing content to consumers,” said Jack Griffin, incoming Chair of MPA, and CEO of Time Inc. “MPA’s new identity expresses our strong belief that, together, all of these forms collectively express what it means to be a magazine media company.”

“The essence of what consumers love about magazines – the immersive experience, the curated content, the sense of community and the award-winning photography and design – is now being enhanced by technologies and devices that support high definition imagery, video animation, mobile e-reading and Web access," said Nina Link, the president and CEO of MPA."The future of magazine reading is undergoing a transformation; audiences and advertisers now interact with magazine brands on so many different levels and platforms. MPA’s identity simply had to reflect this fact.”