U.S. survey says city and regional publishers still rely heavily on print for revenue

The annual Folio: magazine survey of city and regional magazine publishers says that local titles rely on print for as much as 93% of their annual revenue. And more print products are scheduled to launch this year than at any time in the last 5 years. A report in MediaPost says

Along with the rest of the publishing industry, print peaked in the mid-2000s for city and regional magazines, notes the report. It accounted for up to 95.9% of overall revenue in 2005, but it hasn't dipped far from that point. While custom publishing contracts have taken the place of a few ad dollars, the print-to-non-print revenue ratio is just a few points off where it was 10 years ago. The numbers are almost exactly what they were in 2008. (about 94%)

The smaller the publisher, the tougher it is  to diversify, says the story, and such publishers still count on  print ad sales for 80% of their revenue, essentially unchanged over the last 4 years.

Magazine traditional ad revenues will be flat or declining through 2018, says PwC; but digital growth will help hold the line

A story in Ad Age summarizing some of the implications for the magazine industry of the just-released PwC annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2014-2018 suggests that while traditional advertising revenues will be flat or declining, digital growth will help to hold the line.

Consumer magazine revenue will be essentially flat this year at $24.6 billion compared with 2013, according to the annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was released on Tuesday. It will remain at approximately $24.6 billion through 2018, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted.

According to a report in Publishing Executive,  the big takeaway is that as the entertainment and media industry becomes more digitized, advertising growth is outpacing consumer spending. Unsurprisingly, this reveals that consumers are less inclined to pay for digital content. 

Digital consumer magazine revenue is much larger than digital circulation. Digital consumer magazine advertising revenue will rise by an average of 19.2 percent a year from US$3.15 billion in 2013 to US$7.6 billion in 2018; Digital circulation revenue will be just US$1.45 billion in 2018.

Masthead magazine revenue ranking released

Masthead magazine has once again published its very valuable tally of the top 50 magazines in Canada by revenue.

The top 10 titles by total revenue for 2011 (boldfaced have increased since 2010) are:

• Chatelaine ($48,378,727) down 1.54% from 2010
• Canadian Living ($47,859,143) -0.51%
• Maclean's ($40,096,008) -1.54%
• Reader's Digest ($30,815,003) -16.32%
• Canadian House & Home ($24,773,564) -9.24%
• Hello! Canada ($22,233,646) -4.97%
• Flare ($20,916,059) +19.57%
• Elle Canada ($19,254,651) +13.22%
• Coup de Pouce ($18,742,139) -2.22%
• Fashion ($17,033,640) 6.92%

The top 6 hold the same positions they had in last year's tally but notably, they all slid in revenue.

The figures are calculated based largely on page data provided by Nielsen Leading National Advertisers and circulation data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations or the CCAB division of BPA Worldwide. The revenue figures are weighted to try to account for discounts. While revenue from inserts is included, revenue from special interest publications, government grants and ancillary marketing are not included. 

The complete Top 50 list can be downloaded in pdf form. 

Print in U.S. b2b publications expected to fall below 50% of revenue in 2010

Research undertaken for Folio: magazine into the expectations of business-to-business CEOs in the U.S. has found that, for the first time ever the share of b2b revenue from print is expected to be less than 50% in 2010.

• Print advertising (47.5%)
• E-media (16.6%)
• Events (10.6%)
• Custom publishing (8.8%)
• Paid subscriptions (6.9%)
• Data information sales (2.6%)
• Other (7%)

E-media is is expected to be up 27.7%; print advertising down 9.4% from 2009.