22 Magazines That Are Seeing Increased Ad Revenues

The Business Insider recently wrote an article about 22 Magazines That Are Actually Kicking Butt In 2009. They discussed how the Magazine Publishers of America keep records of 249 different magazine titles and of those 249, 227 saw a decline in their ad revenues in 2009 compared to 2008. Over 91% of the industry is suffering from the recent decrease in advertising.

Looking at the 22 titles that are earning more revenue than they were last year, five are published by Meredith Corporation. Patrick Taylor, of Meredith Corporation, says these magazine titles “do a good job of building their brand” especially on the Internet. He went on, saying that magazines can find a larger audience by making content available on the internet. Also, by going online, publishers can find new forms of advertising and creative ways to boost their print subscriptions. This is just another example of how going digital can help support your print and keep you afloat during tough times.

Here is a quick run through of the 22 Magazines that have muscled out increasing ad revenues over the last year.

Better Homes and Gardens - Up 1.9%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $547,346,531
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $557,534,448

Ladies’ Home Journal - Up 2.5%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $220,113,560
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $225,511,330

Soap Opera Digest - Up 2.5%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $12,894,257
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $13,217,837

Executive Travel SkyGuide - Up 4.0%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $5,470,212
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $5,689,007

Family Fun - Up 4.3%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $75,434,521
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $78,651,596

Woman’s World - Up 5.4%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $23,708,020
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $24,987,610

Endless Vacation - Up 5.7%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $10,493,050
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $11,091,905

Women’s Health - Up 8.8%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $58,709,640
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $63,900,299

More - Up 12.7% (Meredith,
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $82,346,521
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $92,812,076

Muscle & Fitness - Up 13.2%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $71,483,698
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $80,948,436

Scholastic Parent & Child - Up 14.5%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $34,688,914
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $39,682,262

Flex - Up 15.4%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $24,595,411
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $28,379,120

Organic Gardening - Up 17.4%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $3,198,473
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $3,754,516

OK Weekly - Up- 17.5%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $47,755,400
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $56,099,244

Fitness - Up 17.5%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $70,798,273
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $83,200,149

Saveur - Up 18.9%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $8,678,312
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $10,322,035

Family Circle - Up 21.8%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $254,590,657
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $310,058,104

Twist - Up 22.1%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $2,635,592
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $3,217,460

The Week - Up 30.4%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $19,760,226
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $25,766,774

People Style Watch - Up 32.2%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $19,675,743
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $26,005,532

Fine Cooking - Up 66.2%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $793,914
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $1,319,440

Spry - Up 550.6%
2008 Ad Revenues through September: $5,508,047
2009 Ad Revenues through September: $35,837,667

More Reason to Socialize

Over a short period of time, sites like Facebook and Twitter have grown from messaging tools between friends into widely adopted means of self-promotion, advertising, and interaction. Most recently, the growing popularity of sharing useful information through these networks has caused a shift in the way the internet is being used, blurring the lines between its informational and social atmosphere.

As of last week that gray area got a little grayer. Microsoft announced that they struck deals with the two social networking giants to start integrating real time search results that will come directly from Twitter and Facebook users but will be listed within the Bing search engine results. Google also announced that they cut a similar deal with Twitter and would soon be launching a whole new search tool called ‘Social Search’. So it appears that now the influence of your tweets and updates will expand beyond just their narrow social circles.

This all came about as increasing amounts of traffic to websites were coming from Facebook and Twitter, taking some potential business away from search engines. The search engines, rather than compete, realized that when people are seeking information they are finding that content is often more relevant when it comes from someone within their sphere of influence online and not a mysterious and complex algorithm. Also, social search is predominantly based on recency because more times than not the most recent information is also the most pertinent.

What does this mean for publishers? There are larger marketing opportunities in growing your online social circle and actively participating within it. This is also important because for the first time these new forms of search are giving you some control over being found.  Instead of solely being bound by the strict rules of search engine optimization and highly competitive keywords, now by making regular use of Twitter and Facebook you are vicariously using search engines to reach an even larger audience. The more social you become with your marketing, the more traffic directed through your links.

Search Engine Optimization & Your Publication; What is Dirxion Doing?

As a publisher looking to move your printed material to the web, you’ll find that the majority of the digital publishing options out there are fully Flash-based. To most people this may actually sound more than acceptable. Flash content is great as there are hardly any limitations to building interfaces, designing, animating and creating user interaction. It has all the elements that give a site the heightened experience that today’s users are looking for. Flash is used to break all those conventional rules associated with flat, lifeless HTML pages.

But with all of its pros comes one very large con – unlike HTML, Flash content can’t be indexed by search engines. And if people can’t find your content on Google, Bing or Yahoo, it’s up to you to put it directly in front of them. But even with Herculean marketing efforts, your content will never reach its full audience potential.

Dirxion understands that if you want to maximize your reach and circulation, it’s critical that the content of your pages can be properly crawled by spiders for search engines. It’s for that reason we have introduced a Search Engine Optimization method designed specifically for digital publishers. We call it Trax. When you send us files for your new digital publication, we not only convert your data into Flash but also run it through Trax making a search engine friendly format called ASP. ASP is a dynamic code that is first sent to an ASP engine, where the file can be read – line by line – and then returned to indexing spiders and browsers as plain HTML. So it works just like HTML. And with Trax laid, this data will run behind the scenes solely for Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl and navigate through your pages. But on the front end of your publication, your readers will still have the rich media experience of Flash.

Our SEO efforts, in a nutshell:

–Presenting all of the pages in your directory in a format that can easily be indexed by the search engines. Search engine users can now find your directory by searching for business names, categories, addresses, phones numbers, and more. Not to mention, search engine results open up pages inside of your directory with searched keywords already highlighted!

–Creating dynamic, search engine friendly landing pages that are designed for intuitive the optimal user experience.

–Providing additional ways to share pages from your directory with friends and family.

–Implementing URL strategies to optimize traffic to your site.

–Updating or adding more content when possible.

Our ultimate goal for customers is maintaining the familiar experience of print, while using the web to increase readership and engagement. Marketing is always going to be king, but there is no reason not to have SEO on your side. With the help of Dirxion and Trax, more readers will find your content. That’s already been the case with the customers we’ve converted.  Search engine directed traffic has been increasing drastically. Some publications are currently seeing up to 78% of their traffic coming from search engines.

Contact a sales representative to learn more about how Dirxion can have your publishing put in front of a larger audience now. Call 888.391.0202.

Special Magazine Issues Made Even More Special

The New York Times has just published a good article about magazine publishers making some waves with special issues – ESPN’s Body Issue for example, where athletes are featured in mostly nude poses.

Gary Belsky, editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine brings up a great point in the article: “These days, people are skeptical enough about print, or at least wary enough about print, that they’re looking for executions that differentiate print.”

This couldn’t be closer to the truth.

Belsky goes on to say, “Print can’t deliver music, video, but what print can deliver is beautiful, in-depth visuals and journalism that explores subjects in a particular kind of way.”

That’s a HUGE misconception with print. Print can actually deliver more now than ever. By distributing your “print” on paper and online in the same form, like a special issue, it can differentiate your publication and attract more advertisers.

Digital editions not only cost less to publish and distribute, they also allow publishers to up-sell really exciting features to advertisers like music, video, animated ads, rollover windows and hyperlinks. All of these things add an element of “cool” among audiences and allow advertisers to offer more dimensions and in turn, value, to their ad.

“Magazines need to offer these creative alternatives to standard pages,” said Charlie Zakin, vice president for corporate media at Hasbro in response to Hasbro running an ad on the November cover of FamilyFun magazine, the first time FamilyFun would do such an ad. (The cover would be a pocket and contain a pull-out sheet promoting Hasbro’s family-game-night initiative.)

Imagine a digital edition of FamilyFun, where an animated section of the cover would promote and link to a pop-up window, which would contain all of the information found in this fun pull-out sheet, complete with animation, audio or video about the family-game-night initiative. Cool, eh?

I’ll end with this quote from Deborah Mignucci, publisher of Disney FamilyFun:
“Print is not the medium that is in vogue right now, and so we have extra pressure to overdeliver to our advertisers.”

Magazine Publishers, use a digital edition to spring up some new advertising sales. With animated, interactive ad pages you can start overdelivering now.

Retailers Finding New Touch Points With Digital Catalogs

It is widely accepted that one of the keys to success is the ability to adapt. The retail industry, customarily driven by brick and mortar stores and weighty catalog mailings, has been profoundly affected by present-day circumstances. The current harsh economic climate coupled with the rampant growth of online shopping and social media has caused many companies to take a step back to reevaluate their strategies. The retailers that have done the best jobs to adapt and start using these “threats” to find new marketing opportunities are starting to reap the benefits of their versatility through increased revenues.

The catalog has been the flagship of the retail industry for decades. Even with the recent increased shipping costs and decreased sales, it’s still hard to turn a blind eye to its proven track record and ongoing performance. Data shows that on average, catalogs can still generate $7 in sales for every dollar it takes to have them published and mailed. And how do you give a value to the catalog’s unmatched ability to show off a retailer’s well polished image? For most retailers it also goes unequalled in its skill of generating new business. It would be a drastic lapse in judgment to simply abandon it in an effort to cut costs.

Unwilling to sacrifice reach or branding, the adaptive retailers have been finding that the solution to reducing these expenses doesn’t have to be touching fewer customers, but instead changing how they touch customers. Besides the traditional means - decreasing circulation, trimming the size of catalogs and using less expensive paper - a company can take a portion of their savings to reinvest into Internet marketing. In the retail industry, online marketing and digital catalogs are growing in popularity and are much less expensive alternatives when compared to the traditional print forms. Statistics show that for every dollar a retailer spends doing online marketing they have a $45 return.

So in situations where it may be adapt or perish, those who allow themselves to evolve to the changing circumstances will grow stronger. The retailers who are quick on their feet and can find that harmonization between the tangible and digital can not only survive but thrive in a desert-like economy.

What’s on your desktop?

First came what’s on your iPod, then came what’s on your Pandora mix? Could the same be said for what digital publications are on your desktop?

All right, maybe that’s a stretch to assume that online publications such as digital catalogs, digital magazines and digital phone books are that overwhelmingly popular. However, we have seen continued growth in all digital look and feel publications, in addition to a number of unique ways that people are accessing these publications (i.e. full publication downloads, desktop icon shortcuts and social networking links.)

So maybe the question should be when do we reach the point where people ask if you’ve seen the latest fall catalog or if you’ve read such and such article in this month’s online edition? Maybe that virtual conversation is already taking place. Have you shared an entire digital edition or a specific product or an article in a travel guide? Or maybe you are working on a wish list from one of your favorite online catalogs? If so, drop us a line at marketing@dirxion.com!

A Better Way to Search

Imagine being able to offer your customers the power to search across all of your digital editions from one simple little search box. With Dirxion’s Catalog Library Search, the days of searching through individual  publications are gone.

By giving your customers the ability to search all of your online publications simultaneously, not only will you provide better search results, you’ll also boost the end-user experience to a new level of satisfaction. Your customers will now be exposed to products/articles/ads that they might not have otherwise seen.

One customer that recently took advantage of Dirxion’s Catalog Library Search is TED Magazine, the voice of top electrical distributors in North America. Try it for yourself.

The Catalog Library Search feature packs a lot of potential, are you ready to take advantage of it?

Revamping Your Print Brand through Digital Publications

In the wake of an unstable economy and dramatically changing consumer trends, many publishers are finding that now may be the best time strategically to re-evaluate their branding strategies. Being seen to evolve your brand and expand or concentrate your market offering is a sign of an active, focused and thriving business. By showing this strength of brand character, you will not only promote confidence externally in your customer base but also internally in your staff.

In an article entitled “8 Tips for Using Digital to Beat the Recession,” author Jeff Maling writes that the digital divide can now, more than ever, be used as an opportunity to market and that those who can crack the digital code during the recession will be winners when the economy improves.

But what does this mean for you, Publishers? It means that now may just be the time to update your message and medium for the digital frontier. While it may seem like a difficult challenge to keep your print brand exciting and relevant without sacrificing the value and familiarity that your customers have come to know and trust, it’s not. Digital publications fully support your brand identity (the vibrant images, alluring layouts and aesthetics neatly blended with content), while offering you extraordinary opportunities to enhance and refresh your print through e-media. With digital publications, you can create an exciting new way for your customers to experience your print!

One way to get creative your digital publication is to add multimedia, such as audio, video and animation. With multimedia, you can elevate a product or service beyond a static picture and text, swaying consumers when it matters most – in the act of shopping for a product or service. It’s an excellent way to add simple yet effective impact to your digital publication and it also serves as an excellent revenue generation tool for those publishers in the business of selling ad space.

Another way that digital publications can revamp your print is through the use of hyperlinks. By adding hotlinks to either an advertisers’ website or a retailers’ ecommerce site, you lead customers/shoppers/readers directly to the pages they want to see, enabling them to take action immediately.

Other interactive features that give your print brand a fresh new feel include sticky notes, web thumbnails, product information rollovers, mapping, integrated order forms, banner ads and search. Combined with your print content, these interactive features make the product easy and fun to use and encourage the user to return to the product.

While revamping your brand with the state-of-the-art features mentioned above, you can simultaneously expand your brand presence, drive your marketing and circulation-building with our “share” tool. The share tool not only allows users to share the publication by email but also via a number of different social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, etc.

Other viral programs to consider are RSS, email and blogging, which all allow you to notify your audience immediately when new publications are available – no more waiting weeks or months for fulfillment and delivery!

If you are looking for a brand extension offline, we can also digitally convert your publication(s) for use on CD, kiosk or USB Flash drive. Consider the possibilities here! A CD and USB Flash drive can be bundled with your print or distributed separately in-store, in the mail, at conferences, business meetings, and much more! A kiosk could be located in an airport, mall, travel center, retail store or hotel.

One final touch on any digital branding enhancement is the ability to show your care for the environment. Dirxion knows all about going green and consumers want to know all about it. Give your customers the knowledge, power and ability to give back to the world we live in. Your print publication has so much to offer and can offer even more with a little digital revamping, all while helping the environment.

It should be mentioned here that digital publishing also offers the potential for a lower-cost distribution platform, particularly when it comes to international distribution. Digital publications work really well for publications reaching that kind of broad geography, especially in today’s economic climate. Publishers simply pay a one-time fee to digitize their publication and then they have the capacity to distribute it to as many people across their network at a nominal cost.

As you can see, brand innovation doesn’t have to be expensive, and may present the best opportunity to secure competitive advantage in a high-stakes economic environment. You’ll also have the piece of mind knowing that digital publications can refresh and enhance your brand in a way that can be measured and tweaked accordingly.

Fast Stats

Do people actually use digital page turn publications? Is online publishing really here to stay? The stats speak for themselves. While we don’t want to get into specifics for individual companies, here’s a quick look at some recent usage numbers for our customers:

In the previous six months, directory publications have seen over 1.5 million page views with more than half of that coming in the last three months.

Overall number of visitors to online directories is up almost 9% when comparing the last 90 days to the previous 90 days and the average time spent on the site is up 29%. Even more compelling is that the reach of these directories is expanding way beyond their traditional print distribution.

Catalog usage continues its steady growth. A six month comparison shows a 15% growth in page views and the last 90 days has increased 29% over the previous 90 days. Another interesting find is that the greatest growth has been for those catalogers that place a link to the online catalog in the top right or top center positions of their websites. This makes sense as those are two of the most valuable positions in online advertising, but it’s still good to see that links to the digital catalog are drawing an increasing audience.

Online editions of magazines and guides are following the same great trends as online, page flip catalogs - up in unique users, up in page views and up in URL clicks.

With new opportunities to sell into online publications and an always improving set of features to enhance user interactivity, we are very excited for our publishers to see continued growth in their online publications.

BPA Worldwide President Glenn Hansen Talks About Rule Changes

The President and CEO of BPA Worldwide recently did an interview with PubExec.com author Matt Steinmetz about the recent rule changes that BPA put into place, and also about the growth and future of digital editions.

When asked by Steinmetz if publishers see digital editions as more of a way to sustain their products rather than just an alternate delivery method, Glenn Hansen responded with the following:

“I believe publishers approach electronic (digital) editions with a two-pronged approach. First, electronic editions are a far more cost-effective means of distributing a publication — especially to international subscribers. Second, publishers are recognizing a shift in subscribers’ — and advertisers’ — preferences from print to interactive platforms. For some subscribers, electronic versions can represent a better way to consume information. For advertisers, electronic editions can provide more pin-pointed marketing efforts and, potentially, a better means to measure brand engagement than the print version.

For example, as more advertisers create video to communicate their message, the electronic magazine becomes a better utility for that form of advertising helping electronic editions realize their full potential in terms of user experience. If the electronic edition is more engaging, usage is likely to follow.”

Read the full interview on PubExec.com here

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