Magazine revenue to climb slightly as newspaper decline continues
Consumer magazine revenue will be essentially flat this year at nearly $24.6bn compared with 2014, says the report, and it will climb to approximately $24.7bn by 2019.
During that time, overall ad sales are expected to rise at a combined annual growth rate of less than half a percent, reaching $17bn.
“While advertisers up to now have been slow to remove magazines from their media plans, the market for magazine advertising will be sluggish in the future,” the report said.
Circulation revenue is forecast to fall by half a percent over the next four years to $7.7bn.
“The future industry outlook remains challenging, as burgeoning digital revenue only just counteracts the declines in print,” the report said.
Magazine companies have looked to digital advertising to stem print losses, but print remains their primary source of revenue. For instance, Time Inc., the nation’s largest magazine publisher, generates just 20 per cent of its ad sales from digital.
But the PwC report points out that digital ad revenue will eclipse print by 2019, due to both digital advertising’s sharp increase and print’s continual decline.
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