As they close a brutal year, many magazines are able to make a claim they haven’t in a long time: Ad pages are up in the fourth quarter.

With a last-minute push from food, beauty and auto marketers, many titles saw an uptick in ad pages, or at least smaller declines. Hearst’s Good Housekeeping managed a 6.5 percent increase in December. American Express Publishing’s Food & Wine posted a 1 percent increase in December. And Time Inc. is seeing fourth-quarter improvements in 14 out of its 19 ad categories.

“Food and beverage is up. They’re spending more in the fourth quarter, knowing people are hunkering down more at home,” said Stephanie George, Time Inc.’s president of advertising sales and marketing. “Domestic auto has been incredible this year. It’s nowhere near what it once was, but we’re really bouncing back. The beauty companies are being more aggressive for the holiday season.”

With the majority of titles’ full-year results in, ad pages were down 21.7 percent for 2009 versus 2008, per the Mediaweek Monitor (click here for full results). Business, travel and shelter titles generally fared worse while entertainment, food, and women’s and men’s lifestyle magazines’ declines were smaller.

Looking at results by company, Meredith was one of the best performers, with five titles that were up in pages for 2009 and four that were down. For the second half of 2009 (the first half of Meredith’s 2010 fiscal year), Meredith’s overall pages were up 2.9 percent versus the year-ago period.

Hearst had six titles that had page declines in excess of 23 percent and seven that were down in the 10- to 16-percent range. Rodale’s year-over-year pages were down 27 percent for all 2009 (or down 20 percent excluding BestLife, which folded in May).



Condé Nast didn’t release companywide numbers, but sources there projected overall ad pages would be down about 30 percent. Glamour was projected to be down 17 percent, Arch Digest down 49 percent, and Lucky down 26.8 percent.

And the fourth-quarter lift won’t likely carry over into the first quarter, typically a slow time of year for magazines anyway, publishers said. But if they aren’t seeing a resurgence in advertising, they predict ad spending will be at least level with 2009.

“What we’re going to have in the first quarter is flat,” said Bill Wackermann, publisher of Condé Nast’s Glamour, which projects a 17 percent decline for the year. “Consumers are slowly dipping their toes back in, getting over the fear of shopping. It’s going to be a slow climb.”

“I don’t see a lot of budgets and decisions being made,” said Claudia Malley, vp, U.S. publisher, National Geographic. “Everything is last-minute. They’re still waiting for consumers to show signs of confidence.”

Buyers said as much. “Nobody’s ready to jump all in,” said Jeff Fischer, senior vp managing director of Universal McCann’s print activation group. “The big story I continue to hear is, people are making commitments later and later.”  



Where there was money being spent, publishers said they benefited from having an editorial message that’s relevant in today’s recession, fresh redesigns and unusual creative units.
Time Inc.’s InStyle, for one, is jumping on the augmented reality trend with its December issue. The cover will trigger a video when the user holds it up to a Webcam. Inside, a holiday buying guide called Gifting in 3-D will let readers click to buy advertisers’ products when activated by a Webcam.  

Some publishers also said that in a few cases, schedule changes that enabled them to take ads later in the sales cycle helped their paging.

But above all, publishers said their efforts to sell large, integrated deals are paying off.
“I do see people wanting that 360 [degree] approach in all categories,” said Reader’s Digest vp, publisher Tracey Altman. “I’ve seen it on every RFP we’ve filled out this year, probably more so than last year.”

With that in mind, Reader’s Digest created a pet contest in 2009, sponsored by Procter & Gamble’s Iams, that involved a presence in print, online and on the Today Show, where the winner was announced.

The Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Food & Wine’s signature event, has already signed on eight sponsors, despite being seven months away, F&W vp, publisher Christina Grdovic said. She attributed the early interest to the Classic’s notoriety, multiple touchpoints and ability to extend advertisers’ message to consumers beyond the event itself. “The trend for us is more, large integrated deals,” she said. “It’s advertisers talking about bundling print, digital and something else.”

And Rodale saw the share of its print revenue attached to multi-platform, customized programs grow to 13 percent in 2009 from 11 percent in 2008. The health and fitness publisher is looking to continue that growth in 2010. Its working to sew up sponsorships of three programs that would involve ads in multiple titles, a sign of confidence that advertisers are ready to spend if the idea is right.

“In 2009, they kind of retreated and said, ‘We just want to do traditional media, and [we’d] like a discount, too,’” said MaryAnn Bekkedahl, vp, group publisher, Rodale. “We’re seeing much more leeway. I feel like there’s a sense that it can’t be worse than 2009, and now they’re thinking about growth again.” Let’s hope.

See additional magazine chart here.