Magazine advertising pages declined for the seventh straight year in 2012, down 8.2%, according to data from the Publishers Information Bureau, reports MediaLife Magazine.
The magazine industry has not seen a year-on-year gain in ad pages since 2005 and the drop experienced in 2012 marked the steepest magazine ad page decline since 2009. According to data released this week by the Publishers Information Bureau, while the start to 2013 has seen yet another drop in overall ad spending on magazines - down 5% in the first quarter - the technology industry has upped its investment in the print medium.
Mashable reports that between January and March this year, ad revenue in the tech sector rose by 21.6%, more than double the increase in food and food products ad spend. Total technology sector magazine spend was $215.9 million in the first quarter. The technology category includes hardware, software, mobile phones and other handsets, as well as telecoms providers.
This data was originally supplied to the Publishers Information Bureau by Kantar Media, and Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media, describes the increase as "an anomaly". According to Swallen, the increase can be attributed to the ad spend of a single advertiser: Microsoft. He adds that the software brand launched a number of campaigns during the first quarter to promote its latest software offering, Windows 8, as well as Office 365. "The increase is all Microsoft," he told Mashable.
Although Microsoft made the most notable contribution, the likes of Adobe and BlackBerry also undertook a significant marketing push for the launch of the BlackBerry Z10 phone earlier this year.
Much of the overall decline in ad spend can be attributed to the rise in new media, according to MediaLife Magazine, leading to the closure of various print publications. But David Cooperstein, a Forrester Research analyst, believes the spike in the first quarter is a sign that big tech businesses and advertisers are realising that print is still a viable advertising model. According to Cooperstein, this increase in spend sees tech brands shifting their focus by placing ads in consumer-oriented titles, rather than purely technology-focused magazines.
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