Six months of magazine media 360° results reveal 10 per cent audience growth

According to the January data from MPA in the US, audiences were up 10.1 per cent over the prior year; the six month average for August 2014-January 2015 versus August 2013-January 2014 shows a 10 per cent increase.

According to MPA,  when it launched in September 2014, the chorus of professional naysayers were surprised to see that the Magazine Media 360° Brand Audience Report revealed 10 per cent growth in audience across platforms year-on-year. Now, with six consecutive months of data, that single point of data has grown into a consistent trend. 

This further affirms that consumer demand for magazine media content not only continues to increase, it is at its highest levels ever.

The provenance of the data further underscores the Magazine Media 360° veracity, as it is proffered by the most respected third‐party providers. Data is collected from GfK MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer® (print+digital editions), GfK MRI’s Teenmark® or the IpsosAffluent Survey USA, as well as any or all of web (desktop/laptop), mobile web, and/or video as tracked by comScore or Nielsen Online. 

The new report reveals an average monthly gross audience for magazine brands of 1.6 billion in August 2014‐January 2015 versus 1.4 billion in August 2013‐January 2014. The strong performance has been supported each month in the current period by video and mobile web consumption, up 58 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively, over the same time period in the prior year.

Print+digital editions and web (desktop/laptop) were up one per cent in the aggregate. 

Commenting on the data, Mary Berner, president and CEO, MPA, said: “When we introduced Magazine Media 360° six months ago and became the first industry to establish a metric that considered its entire audience, we thought that this more accurate measurement would be a game changer. But, what we didn’t anticipate was that the figures would be so strong and that advertisers would embrace them so rapidly. We are delighted that Magazine Media 360° is so quickly becoming the industry standard and that the news is consistently good, defying all those cynics’ and skeptics’ predictions for doom and gloom.”

The complete reports, which currently cover approximately 145 magazine media brands from over 30 companies, representing 95 per cent of the reader universe, can be found at www.magazine.org.

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