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Publishers’ pump up the volume

Posted in Media, Nikki Preston, Latest reporters' blogs August 20th, 2007 by Nikki Preston

As the consumer magazine ABC figures arrive in journalists’ inboxes at midday Thursday and they pounce on the actively purchased and average net circulation figures in order to find news stories, what is left out is actually which publishers are plumping up their figures with price promotions and by bundling magazines together.

But does this really make a difference to advertisers and media agencies whose job it is to make sure as many people as possible in their target audience see the ads and aren’t so concerned as to whether the magazines were sold at full or discounted price?

The publishers are really only short-changing themselves and aggravating the competition by selling their titles below cover price for a bolstered circulation. But they clearly believe pays off in the end by attracting more advertisers.

A more in-depth look into the ABCs shows that magazines such as News Mags’s Love it! And ACP-NatMags’ Real People in the real life sector sold around 50 per cent of their titles in the first half of 2007 for below cover price. Love it! discounted 143,306 of the 390,278 magazines actively purchased magazines, while Real People cut the price of 100,996 of the 202,980 sold at newsstand and other single copy sales.

Other titles that also saw a significant price chop in the last period were the struggling women’s titles. About a third of Emap’s More!, which is soon-to-be transformed into a women’s weekly title, was sold at full price with the remaining 101.613 sold below cover price. Both Glamour and Cosmopolitan also plumped its circulations by selling about 80,000 copies at a lower price.

Separately, the wide gap between Nuts and Zoo looks to have been fabricated by IPC, which slashed the price of 47,539 of its 222,139 copies at newsstand while all but 25 of Zoo’s 182,700 newsstand copies were sold at the full price.

However, many media agencies and publishers are already cottoning on to these clever circulation boosting antics.

Publishers who also believe these tactics are unfair and misleading should also tread with caution because if their circulation figures start to slide I am sure they wouldn’t hesitate to cut prices and double bagging copies just to retain advertisers.