Collapse of Magazine Ad Market May Be Secular, Not Cyclical

Every single category of magazine advertisers reduced their ad budgets in 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Ad pages fell nearly 12 percent in total. The biggest declines were autos, down 20.5 percent to $1.6 billion; and drugs, which declined 14.5 percent to $2.2 billion.

PIB's description of the downturn is interesting because it doesn't mention the web. The recession may be reducing ad budgets, but magazines and other printed media have a secular problem that is also causing ad money to leak away: the increasing relevance of the web and the abandonment of print as a preferred medium for disbursing information.

Perhaps the decline that proves this is the 26 percent loss of ad pages experienced by the New Yorker. This magazine has long been thought to be somewhat immune from the trend of seeking information online. It has one of the highest subscriber renewal rates in the business. NYer readers read this magazine, by which I mean "read" in the old-fashioned sense, like a book. It's not something you flip through while on the beach or at the doctor.

Among the few gainers were Fast Company, whose pages went up nearly 24 percent, and the Economist, which eked out a 4.4 percent rise.

The decline came after three years of flatness, according to Folio. That's another indicator of a medium in decline -- when it cannot grow during a boom period.