Tech with Glamour for more ad sales
After months of dwindling ad sales, the magazine is looking a little brighter — particularly for Glamour. The women's magazine reported a 57 percent jump in ad sales for its September issue compared to last year. Marketplace's Janet Babin looks into one big factor for the increase: The iPad.
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: For the past couple of seasons, advertising in glossy magazines like Glamour has been practically been a fashion don’t. Print ad revenues were down 18 percent last year; they’re still lagging. The drought, though, may break this coming fall. A lot of fashion magazines are reporting that their upcoming September issues — traditionally the really big ones — are going to be stuffed with ad pages. But it’s not the latest hemline trends or new over-the-knee boots that are driving sales. It’s that darned iPad.
Janet Babin reports from North Carolina Public Radio.
Janet Babin: Glamour’s iPad deal has online sales driving print ads, not the other way around. Advertisers that want a top spot on the iPad app, also have to buy space in the magazine’s print edition. The New York Times reports Glamour’s ad pages are up 57 percent for September.
Marissa Gluck with Radar Research says the print-online union is long overdue.
Marissa Gluck: Print has been struggling for over a decade now trying to figure out how to compete with online. And I think that they finally figured out that they’re not supposed to compete with online; they’re supposed to work together.
Gluck says it took an innovation like the iPad for magazines to let go of their organizational denial. More than three million of the tablets sold in just over three months, and demand is still growing.
Noah Elkin is a senior analyst at eMarketer. He says no brand manager can ignore the iPad’s “touch web.”
Noah Elkin: The ability for the consumer to interact with web content using a touch screen is a very dramatic difference from the way that people interact with content on the desktop with a screen.
But the iPad’s touch can’t prop up print forever. Forecaster Faith Popcorn with the BrainReserve says it’s a support system for an eroded model.
Faith Popcorn: As the applications get better, you’re gonna go “what do I need a magazine for? My goodness it’s heavy.” When you see something in your mailbox you’re gonna go like “yick! How fast can I get rid of this?”
Glamour says the combination of both print and digital opportunities has been very attractive to the ad community.
I’m Janet Babin for Marketplace.