UK special interest magazine publisher Future reported a 25% year-on-year increase in online advertising revenue for the December quarter yesterday. Future publishes a range of titles including The Knitter and Simply Knitting. They also reported weaker retail sales yet strong subscription sales.
Researching the Future announcement online, I saw that it was not all good news. gamesindustry.biz reports a downturn in the PC gaming market when reporting on Future’s announcement. Future publishes the official PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo magazines plus PC Gamer, PC Zone and Edge.
There are two key aspects of yesterday’s announcement by Future which interest me: the online ad revenue growth and the strength of subscription versus retail sales. While the latter may reflect UK and US model differences over Australia, the shift of advertising online and away from print is a global trend (rush).
There is no doubt we are seeing similar trends here in computer and game based titles. Sales in this magazine segment have fallen considerably over the last year. So much so that we have reduced space allocation in our newsagency … another reason newsagents need to have magazine fixturing which can change.