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Shortly before Labor Day, the MPA (The Association of Magazine Media) released its annual Magazine Media Factbook, which includes the latest full-year data available on the industry. Now it's no secret that the industry has struggled—huge declines in printed copy ad revenue have done great damage, and recent reports in the trades have trumpeted corporate restructuring and rumored layoffs—but the report does its best to position the medium positively. Setting aside questionable selling points (print magazine readers have more friends?!), there are some interesting and favorable points to be made about the medium.
First, magazines have made some modest gains, at least in audience growth. As can be seen in Table 1, on average, there was a 6.2% increase in audience (defined here as gross brand impressions) between 2014 and 2015. Since circulation and newsstand sales are down, we assume this can be attributed to growth in the digital arena, including digital edition, online and video. In fact, per the data we compiled from the Factbook in Table 1, many genres (epicurean, men's fashion, newsweeklies, business/finance) actually garner a larger share of impressions from their online presence than they do from their traditional (print + digital) incarnations.
The report also highlights the appeal of digital editions among the young and affluent, as well as white collar workers, who all index well above the norm in reading digital editions of magazines (see Table 2). This isn't really news, considering that magazines have always skewed in this direction, demographically, but let's be honest—digital is a hot topic that's more likely to get play in the press.
Another angle worth noting in this report is the magazine industry's relationship with social media. In March 2016 alone, magazine media content was "liked" or "followed" over 900 million times, with the highest proportion on Facebook. In the first quarter of 2016, the number of likes/follows grew by 6% on Facebook, 9.5% on Twitter, and a healthy 19.2% on Instagram. Clearly there is value to be gained through these tie-ins—magazines continue to experience gains in each of the social media measured, and we would imagine that this is a particularly effective way to reach potential Millennial (and younger) readers who would not necessarily pick up a print copy.
At least to some degree, the writing is on the wall when it comes to the industry increasing its focus on digital and social. Just this week, Joanna Coles was named chief content officer at Hearst, with a mandate to expand Hearst's reach beyond traditional means. She achieved success at Cosmopolitan, particularly through expansions into social media and video content production; it's reasonable to expect that the powers-that-be hope that she can translate this into success for the entire stable of Hearst titles. Will it work? Who knows. But it's better than sitting around and hoping that the print edition sales are going to suddenly turn around.