How Magazines’ Ad Pages Stack Up
“The chief business of the American people is business,” President Calvin Coolidge said in 1925.
Seven decades later, the interest of consumers and advertisers in how business is translated by business magazines has enabled three of these publications to rank once again among the top five in ad pages.
According to 1998 figures released this month by the Publishers Information Bureau in New York, Forbes finished No. 2 for the year, up 1.5% over 1997, with 4,734 ad pages. Business Week was No. 3, up 1.3%, with 4,167 pages. Fortune ranked fifth with 3,899 ad pages, a healthy increase of 8.3%.
Leading the list of all magazines again, despite a drop of 11.1% in ad pages, was PC Magazine with 5,386. People, which will mark its 25th anniversary in the spring, was No. 4 with 4,038, for a gain of 1%.
Among the business magazines, editorial competition will intensify this year in coverage of the Internet and the impact of this rapidly growing medium on the bottom line. Business Week has announced plans to publish a quarterly section focusing on e-commerce and the ways that old-line businesses are using interconnectivity to streamline their operations.
“The first section [in March] will have a minimum of 20 to 25 editorial pages,” said G. David Wallace, the assistant managing editor who supervises Business Week’s technology coverage. As a clear sign of how closely Business Week and its two main competitors are now following electronic media, Wallace pointed to the increasing number of cover stories in this area they have run in recent months.
“I think that makes a statement,” he added.
Meanwhile, the magazine industry in 1997 had its biggest advertising gain in 13 years--a 13.1% rise in estimated ad revenue to $12.8 billion. In 1998, revenue increased to $13.8 billion, an increase of 7.8%, its lowest rate of growth in five years.
Last year’s revenue estimate was based on a 2.6% increase in ad pages (compared with a 5.2% increase in 1997), to a total of 242,383 pages.
Among men’s magazines, GQ was strong, with an 11.2% gain to 2,035 pages. Esquire, though carrying less than half the ad pages of the rival GQ in 1998, continued to rebuild by drawing 35.2% more pages than it did the year before, for a total of 807. Men’s Journal was up 19.6% to 983 pages.
And the 10-times-yearly P.O.V., targeting young men with a leggy Mira Sorvino on its February cover and such stories as “Get Rich! (And Have Fun Doing It!),” boasted an impressive 70% increase to 604 pages.
Young men are a tough audience for magazines to reach--and keep--but Maxim continues to pull them in with its tempting mix of revealingly clad actresses (such as January/February cover girl Bridget Fonda) and short pieces on sports, gadgets and grog that are easy on the attention span.
The latest proof is that the 10-times-yearly magazine, launched by British-owned Dennis Publishing Inc. in the spring of 1997, attracted 625 pages of advertising in its first full year of publication and it is hoping a hike in circulation will guarantee advertisers. Its so-called rate base will jump from the current 650,000 to 950,000 in the second half of this year.
Playboy’s circulation in the first half of 1998 was 3.2 million; Men’s Health was 1.6 million; Rolling Stone, 1.3 million; GQ, 700,000; Esquire, 672,000; Men’s Journal, 567,000; and Details, 476,000.
Time led the trio of news weeklies in advertising last year; its 2,837 pages reflected an increase of 2% over the magazine’s 1997 total. Newsweek was down 4.9% to 2,517 pages, and U.S. News & World Report dropped 7.4% to 1,968.
Conde Nast House & Garden, relaunched in 1996, marks a 100,000-copy rise in its rate base to 650,000 with the February issue. Its number of ad pages increased 22.1% last year to 919.
Other standouts last year included the bimonthly Civilization, up 42.9% in ad pages to 238; Elle Decor, up 36% to 1,098; and Fast Company, up 50.3% to 1,047.
InStyle, the women’s magazine that manages to combine celebrity fluff with beauty and fashion coverage, showed a 73% gain in ad pages between 1996 and 1997. Last year the hot Time Inc. publication grew its total by 44.7% over 1997 to 1,940 pages, while circulation increased to nearly 1.2 million in the first half.
Martha Stewart Living was up 14.9% in ad pages last year to 1,378. New Woman, which went through a shuffling of editors, plummeted 31.7% to 664.
Teen People, spun off from People last January, rocketed to a circulation of 1.2 million, effective with the new February issue. On the sales front, the teen monthly ran 707 ad pages last year, compared to 664 gathered by YM, which was up a hefty 16.9% for the year. Seventeen, which dominates the growing teen category, increased its ad pages by 7.1% to 1,404.
The New Yorker, in a year that saw the exit of editor Tina Brown and the promotion of David Remnick as her successor, declined 8.4% to 1,961. Vanity Fair was up 10.9% to 1,883.
The Source hip-hopped forward by 30.9% to 1,409 pages.
Yahoo! Internet Life posted an increase of 49.5% to 724 pages.
The bigger gainers also included three Conde Nast publications--Architectural Digest, up 21.1% to 1,608 pages; Bon Appetit, up 30.7% to 1,168; and Bride’s, which recently announced a partnership with WeddingChannel.com, up 18.1% to 3,670.
ESPN the Magazine, the biweekly that launched last spring, generated 1,222 ad pages during the year. Its main rival, the weekly Sports Illustrated, had 2,762, a drop of 4.9% from 1997. The Sporting News, a weekly published by Times Mirror Corp. (which owns The Los Angeles Times), advanced 19.9% to 820 pages.
True Crime Times Two: The race is on to be first with a book on the Anne Marie Fahey-Thomas Capano murder case. In recent days, Simon & Schuster and ReganBooks, a division of HarperCollins, both have announced plans to publish accounts of the case in which Capano, a prominent Wilmington, Del., attorney, was found guilty Jan. 17 of killing Fahey, a former mistress who was an aide to Delaware Gov. Thomas Carper. S&S; has signed Ann Rule, whose true-crime books include “The Stranger Beside Me” and “Small Sacrifices.” ReganBooks has an agreement with Philadelphia Inquirer reporter George Anastasia, who has covered the story for his paper. The two publishers said their books would be out in the fall.
Paul Colford’s e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com
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For More Reviews, See Sunday Book Review: This week, “Let’s Go, France”: Sunil Khilnani on the idea of France, Eugen Weber on the French Enlightenment and Flora Lewis on the European century.
