Magazine Ad Trends: Products Advertised Equals Topics Covered

There's an old trick in the magazine business: if you want advertisers, then cover them editorially. I don't mean the ethically-challenged tit for tat we've all seen some publishers indulge. In this case, there's a more natural and obvious connection. If you never mention consumer electronics in your publication, then it becomes harder for ad salespeople to interest consumer electronics companies to advertise:

Ad salesperson: "This is really a great publication for you to reach your customers."

Corporate ad buyer: "But we sell nutritional supplements for older people and you have a magazine for kids. What interest are they going to have in geriatric products?"

Ad salesperson: "Ah, but one day they're going to be older, and think of all the mind share you would have built!"

Tough to make the sale if you can't show the natural interest. That's why you should take a look at this article from Crain's New York Business, which discusses the general state of magazine ads and which categories are up and down in the first quarter of this year as compared to the same time last year:

For the entire industry, rate-card-reported advertising revenue, which does not reflect discounting, came in at $5.2 billion, down 1.2% from the previous year. Ad pages—generally considered the more reliable industry bell weather—fell 6.4%, to 49,167.

The top advertising categories that actually showed growth were retail; transportation, hotels and resorts; financial and real estate; and food. "The category that includes the likes of Kraft’s macaroni and cheese and Lay’s potato chips almost single-handedly held up the magazine industry in the first quarter, according to numbers released Monday by the Publishers Information Bureau of the Magazine Publishers of America."

The categories getting hammered were led by automotive, which is no surprise in the combination of economic downturn and tightening credit market. It dropped 17 percent. Home furnishings and supplies lost 12%. The reporting is based on numbers from Publishers Information Bureau of the Magazine Publishers of America.

You might also check the numbers for how individual magazine titles did. Some of the big winners were All You, Backpacker, Cookie, Ducks Unlimited, Every Day with Rachel Ray, Family Fun, Field and Stream, Medizine Healthy Living, OK Weekly, Quick and Simple, ReadyMade, Remedy, Ser Padres, Transworld Snowboarding, Womens Health, Wondertime, and Relish.

Some of the big losers: ABA Journal, Auto Week, Boating, Businessweek, Coastal Living, Cycle World, Endless Vacation, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune Small Business, Golf for Women, Gourmet, Hemispheres, Kiplingers Personal Finance, Motorboating, National Journal, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, Tennis, US News & World Report, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

A caveat: these are all based on rate cards. But discounting is common, and there's no telling for sure whether the magazines that had gone up might have effectively dropped their price. (However, generally when you're selling a lot of ads, you don't have to drop rates so much.)

Newspaper Ad Revenue Takes a Tumble

If you like newspapers as a market, this is grim. The Newspaper Association of America reported that total print advertising was down 9.4 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to this report in Editor & Publisher. If you include online revenue the drop was 7.9 percent. That is not good, because the newspaper business is clearly related to that of magazines, so think of this as an early warning. And while online ads went from 5.7 percent to 7.5 percent of total newspaper revenue, growth is slowing:

There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion.

As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

It is true that growth rates will, eventually, slow as the pot gets bigger. However, when online advertising is jumping by 20 percent according to Jupiter Media, you really don't want to see newspapers lagging behind.

NFL Forces Photographers to Wear Product Logos

Although I wrote about this on my FotoCounty blog, I thought it might be of passing interest to professional journalists. The National Football League is forcing photographers who are covering NFL games to wear vests with a couple of corporate logos on them. Apparently it's not unheard of in the sports world to turn photojournalists into billboards. Here's the link to what I wrote. If they can get away with that with photographers, why not require writers to also don special gear?

When Pressured by Ad Department, Editor Leaves

According to a C/Net story, PC World editor Harry McCracken said that he had to get crackin' and left the magazine where he had worked for a dozen years. According to the story, he moved on because a senior vice president kept pressuring him to pass on stories that were critical of advertisers. For those writers who think that there is always an impenetrable wall between editorial and advertising, all I can say is ... wanna buy a bridge? Small bills only, please.

I can remember in the late 90s writing a piece for a major technology magazine. When I finished the draft and talked about it with an editor, I heard a lot of concern that my article wasn't complimentary enough to what turned out to be a class of advertiser the magazine wanted to approach. They ended up radically changing the article to make the advertisers happy.

In such a situation, there are only a few things you can do. Have your byline removed from the article if possible, and be sure never work for the publication again. And I think this is one of the few situations where you should become confrontational with the editors. Those who have talked to me about negotiation strategies know that I almost never suggest this, but there are principles involved and nothing to lose. Sure, they might go elsewhere and cause problems at another publication if you show up. But while lots of people note how small the publishing world is, remember that it's also pretty big. Maintaining your business is important, but there do come times that you have to stand up for yourself and for what is right, if for no other reason than backing down can sit with you for an awfully long time - like the rest of your life. And what business client or contact is worth that?