Annual ABC Magazine Stats: 2012

JTMan

The annual ABC magazine stats are out.

• RTE Guide down 16.8% to 61,881.
• Hot Press down just 2.9% to 17,178.
• Phoenix down 11.7% to 14,013.
• VIP Magazine down 0.8% to 20,048.
• Womens Way down 1.9% to 22,120.

Full list here.

IRE60

If we took a leap of faith and said that those figures are in some way reflective of patterns in Ireland (they are a combined ROI and UK figure – not broken out), then it’s very interesting. In absolute numbers the category that completely tanked is “Women's Weeklies” loosing close to 1m followed by “Women's Lifestyle/Fashion” dropping 250,000 (albeit only 4%). It only reaffirms that the discretionary spend is dead and gone.

bogmanfan

Some of the big UK womens titles sinking like a stone there

Company down 31%
Grazia down 10%
More down 40%
New down 21%
Heat down 20%

Some of the Irish ones doing quite well though

U Magazine up 10%
Irish Tatler up 4%

JTMan

Yeah, womans magazines, finance magazines and technology magazines all suffered badly. The whole market, like newspapers, is in terminal decline.

bogmanfan wrote: »

U Magazine up 10%

Dig beneath the surface. Have a look at page 4 of their ABC cert. U magazine only increased their figures via massive bulks on certain issues. Trend is clearly down and U magazine 'helped' the figures via giving their product away for free.

IRE60

Their newstrade sales are down roughly 1,000 and they were kept on a positive by an increase in “issue specific bulks”. But to be fair its perfectible acceptable practice (for example I think U sponsor some show in the RDS and a mag is given out to each attendee) and U are not the worst offenders.

JTMan

Accepted, yes. Bulks cause deceptive circulation figures, by those that don't strip out bulks.

U are not the worst offender. Arguably, INM are.