Trend: IPC offers a Subscription 'MIX'

The Mix from IPC Media is a new subscription format that gives subscribers an opportunity to sample a mix of magazines over a 12-month period.

In a first for the industry 'The Mix' launches in two markets: homes and fashion. 'The Mix: Homes' gives a three-month taster of Homes & Gardens, 25 Beautiful Homes, Ideal home and Livingetc; while 'The Mix: Fashion' gives three months each of Marie Claire, Look, In Style and Now.

According to IPC Head of Subscriptions Marketing, The Mix has been created following research which revealed potential subscribers would appreciate the opportunity to 'pick and mix' titles.

Trend: Pay-as-you-Please Annual Subscription

Proving themselves to be in touch with the latest in the music industry, PASTE (an entertainment publication for progressive thinkers) has launched a “pay as you please” initiative for subscription.

For a limited time, new subscribers and old readers (US only) can pay what they think right for an 11-issue, annual subscription, starting from $1 to beyond the standard price ($19.95) of a normal subscription.

Anyone paying more than the standard price will be thanked in print, their names published in a future issue of PASTE.

PASTE hopes to attract new readers and make them regular subscribers, the theory being that they will stay for the content after coming in for a cheap price. They also note that this unconventional offer will give them insight into just how much their regular readers think the magazine is worth.

Editorial: Five Faces of Femina

In preparation of its fiftieth anniversary in 2008, the October 10, 2007 issue of Femina will be sold with five distinct covers.

This is a part of the two-fold activity undertaken to boost sales. Firstly, ‘Femina’ generated curiosity amongst its readers by conducting a poll on the '50 Most Beautiful Women in India' today, giving interested voters a list of 100 famous women of Indian origin.

This was followed by an SMS activity, inviting readers to nominate their choice of women. The magazine website www.femina.in, also carried an option for visitors to take part in the poll. Ads in ‘Mumbai Mirror’ completed the marketing effort on this. Once the results were compiled, they found their way into the October 10 issue.

Next, ‘Femina’ decided to take up the top five Most Beautiful Women (Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu, Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra and Dipika Padukone) and create five cover pages – one each for these five.

Original source link: agencyfaqs.com

Circulation: Time, Spin Innovate to Improve Engagement

Time magazine's Paid circulation for the second half of 2005 was flat at 4 million, but compared to the same period the previous year, Newsstand sales fell 16.3 percent
During the same period the circulation of music magazine Spin fell 5.3 percent to 540,901 copies, with both subscriptions and newsstand down year-over-year
(both figures from Audit Bureau of Circulations).

This week has seen announcements of significant changes from both magazines in an attempt to improve reader engagement and push up readership figures.

SPIN: Bigger for Better Photos….
Starting with its September issue, Spin increases its trim size from 8-by-10 inches to 9-by-11 inches.

Publisher Malcolm Campbell believes that the move will enable the 21-year-old monthly to include more photos and to stand out on newsstands. It will also help get in more ads. Accompanying the size change are more value-adds like a music player on spin.com (to allow readers to hear the bands they’re reading about) and a new column, "The Spin Mix: Songs You Need to Download Now." The magazine will also will be printed on recycled paper stock.

TIME:Weekend Reading
As a first step toward "redefining the relationship between the reader, the magazine and TIME.com" TIME magazine plans to shift its on-sale date from Monday to Friday, The change which is effective from January 2007, brings back the magazine's original Friday delivery date established by founding editor Henry Luce in 1923.
The publishers believe that the pre-weekend delivery will allow readers to spend more time with the magazine. Copies will hit newsstands on Fridays and most subscribers will receive their magazines by Saturday.
Their competition 'Newsweek' hits the stands on Monday.

Newspaper and magazines have been cost-cutting for last few years. Staff lay-offs seem to be most 'popular' (or rather unpopular) method of cost cutting. Reducing the size of broadsheet to compact, cutting page numbers are few others.
The steps taken by 'Time' and 'Spin' seem more postive as they aim at 'enhancing readership' rather than cost cutting. Let's hope readers and advertisers respond positively too ....

Circulation: Issue-by-issue Measurement

New Auditing tools promise more immediate information, more transparency, and more accountability

It has long been known that different issues of a magazine generate different audience levels and can also attract different type of newsstand buyers. Issues with higher audience levels also tend to bring in readers who read the publication less frequently. A recently concluded study by McPheters & Company found that some magazines accumulate their audiences more rapidly. Weeklies, it was found, accumulate their full audience in the first four weeks after going on sale.

Encouraged by its results, McPheters & Company has announced readership.com - a new print ratings service that does continuous measurement of publication audiences. readership.com, has also partnered with online measurement company comScore Media Metrix to provide additional information about consumers who access publications online.

And they are not alone.

Last month Audit Bureau of Circulation launched its Rapid Report for consumer magazines. ABC Rapid Report allows publishers to voluntarily report their top-line circulation data on an issue-by-issue basis within weeks of the on-sale or non-paid distribution date. American Media Inc. and Meredith Publishing Group have already pledged that all of their ABC-audited titles will voluntarily participate in Rapid Report.

Mediamark Research, too, has been testing a system that is supposed to discover how quickly consumers read individual editions of print magazines, by conducting weekly, web-based consumer surveys that will supplement its twice-yearly printed surveys that have long been the main currency of magazine advertising buys. This study will enable advertisers to better define variables that influence the performance of individual issues and determine the how efficiently and quickly certain issues reached their target audiences.

According to Folio, BPA Worldwide is also working on a system that allows consumer magazine to report issue-by-issue circulation data - numbers of paid and/or non-paid qualified subscription copies and single ‘newsstand’ copies, the appropriate subtotals and the overall qualified paid/non-paid total.

What this could mean:
Tracking print audience levels and engagement on an issue by issue basis will make it easier for advertisers to understand how effective magazine advertising is. And that might change the way which advertising in magazines and newspapers is bought and sold. Another plus, media planners will now be working with data that is fresh and not two years old :)!

Audit Trivia:
I just did a search on ABC in India and I get linked to a site that has not been updated in years. According to information available there 61 Indian magazines were audited on/till May 2001.

Circulation: Magazine as a Supplement in Newspapers

An interesting idea on yesterday's MediaDaily News from MediaPost:

Publishing Group of America (PGA) which is planning to launch 'Texas Profile', a new regional title in September with roughly twice the circulation of its closest competitor, Texas Monthly. How has PGA managed to round up so many Texans?
By inserting the magazine as a supplement in local newspapers. Texas Profile will be distributed in Texas newspapers with subscribers of 625,000 or more.
While some in the industry bemoan the fate of consumer magazines in the face of Internet competition, Texas Profile aims to reach a market that is underserved by media

Growing up I remember most of our magazines being delivered by our Newspaper vendor. My father would buy Seminar from the newsstand and 'Mainstream' was delivered by post.
Are there any Indian magazines being delivered as free supplements in your newspaper?
How are the circulation figures of such supplements calculated?
Any answers...

Read Mediapost story here

Circulation: Growing Internationally

Indian magazine market is very vibrant right now due to launch of a slew of international magazines. Here are the trade secrets of some international publishers and what makes them click in different countries.

Playboy Magazine: Subsidiaries Produce Local Content

While Playboy has been a worldwide icon, executive VP and general manager, Playboy International, Robert O’Donnell, says that unique content is what makes it an international force.
“We stress local rather than universal content,” O’Donnell says. “You have to be relevant to the market. We average between 75 and 90 percent local content between the different markets.”

IDG:Worldwide Markets Require Products

“Our goal has always been to serve our customers worldwide,” says David Hill, president and CEO, IDG International Publishing Services. “On the readership side, the need for information on information technology is present in every country.”
“The only question becomes, ‘Are there enough readers in any given country to support a publication?’," says Hill, adding, “The web has made it possible to reach even smaller audiences that could not be economically reached in print.”
On the advertising side, Hill says, since the IT industry is global, and many of IDG’s customers are global players, the company wants to have a publication or vehicle anywhere in the world they may want to market their products.

Cosmopolitan: The Power of the International Newsstand

Hearst Magazines International president and CEO George Green, says “In the U.S. more than 90 percent of your circulation is subscriptions. Outside the U.S., more than 90 percent is newsstand.”
As a result of the greater percentage of newsstand sales outside the U.S., Green says that the money a publisher receives by publishing internationally is “10-15 percentage points higher” than domestic publishing. Another cost-saving effect of the strong international newsstand is the fact that publishers can cut out subscriber acquisition expenses.
Aside from the power of the newsstand, Green attributes the success of these international editions to the fact that each edition is given a local spin. The editions are published in their local languages, and Green says there are not any Americans working at any of the international editions.
“[The editions] interpret the brand,” he says. “They don’t copy the U.S. edition. The only pickup is the cover frequently, and maybe some other small things.

Read complete article here