Survey: Digital magazines still not a break-out platform

Digital publishing consultancy Mequoda Group has released the results of its third Digital Magazine Market Study. This year, the firm tripled its sample size to 3,642 US adults and backed off the tablet-specific demo they used for the previous studies, which negates year-over-year comparisons, but there are still more than a few highlights.

Respondents are fairly active readers of digital magazines, but not overly so. According to the survey, about 63 per cent had not read a digital magazine in the last 30 days. The remaining 37 per cent read an average of 2.37 issues during that period, however.

Interestingly, that metric almost flips when Mequoda asked about print magazine readership. About 70 per cent of respondents said they read an average of 2.91 print issues in the last 30 days while 30 per cent did not read a print magazine at all.

Either publishers are de-emphasising monetisation of subscriptions and single copy sales or most consumers simply aren’t buying. The study notes that 58 per cent of respondents spent no money on digital magazine single copies or subscriptions in the last 12 months, and of those that did, they averaged US$17.20.

Source: foliomag.com

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