Magazine Audience Wants Quick Content Access

The US magazine audience grew 9.3% between December 2013 and December 2014, from 1.43 billion to 1.59 billion, according to MPA – The Association of Magazine Media. And the research revealed a shift in magazine content consumption habits last year—one not just away from print. The traditional print and digital edition magazine audience—digital meaning an electronic reproduction of the magazine, such as an app version that looks just like the magazine but in electronic format—saw a big drop in share, from 70% to 63%.

Instead, the magazine audience wants easier, faster access to content that doesn’t require flipping through pages, whether print or digital. Video and mobile web visitors—those viewing the website on a mobile device using a browser, not an electronic reproduction—were the huge drivers of magazine audience growth, with respective increases of 41.8% and 76.8%.

While video’s rise in share was small, the mobile web reached a milestone as it expanded its portion by 7 percentage points to pass that of the desktop/laptop web, which measures the visitors to a magazine’s website—again, not an electronic reproduction—signaling another shift in consumption to on-the-go users looking for quick snippets.

US advertisers will spend $19.02 billion on magazine ads in 2015, up just 0.9% from 2014, eMarketer estimates. Growth will remain similar through 2018, boosted by increases in digital spending. Ad spending on digital platforms, which includes mobile devices, will near $4 billion in 2015, up 5.1% year over year, for a share of 20.8%. Between 2015 and 2018, we expect advertisers to increase spending on digital magazine ads by $380 million, vs. a rise of just $180 million for print placements; however, digital will still grab less than one-quarter of total magazine ad spend in the US by the end of our forecast period.

Courtesy of eMarketer