We know that many of you are hungry for data to help you keep up with current media industry trends and prepare for changes that are just around the corner. To help you do just that, we’ve started compiling excerpts from some of the key stories covering issues affecting the publishing and media industries each month.
This month’s selections cover a range of topics, including advertising trends, magazine readership stats, and social media effectiveness.
Magazine Readership Inches Upward (Adweek)
- Total magazine readership across print and digital editions increased about 1.6% from fall 2012 to fall 2013, while that of print alone increased 1.1%.
- Digital readership grew a healthy 49%. But it remains a scant 1.6% of the total magazine audience and slowed down in growth from the 83% year-over-year increase reported this past spring.
- Fast-growing titles include Teen Vogue (up 39%), The Atlantic (up 34%) and Esquire (up 29%).
- The strongest categories were thought-leaders (The Atlantic, The Economist, and The New Yorker also saw double-digit percent increases), fashion glossies (every title in the category grew its readership), and food magazines (Food Network Magazine alone added 1.8 million readers).
New Data From Chitika Insights Shows the iPad Still Rules Web Traffic Coming From Tablets (Talking New Media)
- The latest web usage figures from Chitika Insights show that iPad users still generate more than 80% of all tablet-based web traffic in the U.S.
- More than 96% of all tablet Web traffic in North America is generated by users of just five tablet brands: Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, Barnes & Noble and Microsoft.
News Use Across Social Media Platforms (Pew Research Journalism Project)
- Even though only a fifth of Facebook’s users get news there, that amounts to 10% of the adult population, which puts it on par with Twitter.
- Twitter reaches just 16% of U.S. adults, but half (8% of U.S. adults) use it for news.
- Reddit is a news destination for nearly two-thirds of its users (62%). But since just 3% of the U.S. population uses Reddit, that translates to 2% of the population that gets news there.
- A look at the five social networking sites with the biggest news audiences shows that a majority of news consumers on those sites (65%) get news from just one, and for 85% of those, it is Facebook. About a quarter (26%) get news on two of those sites. And 9% get news on at least three.
Pinterest ROI Study by Piqora (Piqora)
- On average, a pin generates 78 cents in sales—this is up by 25% from Q4 2012.
- On average, a pin drives two site visits and six pageviews.
- 50% of visits happen after 3.5 months of first pinning—pins get discovered long after they’re born and continue driving visits to sites.
- On average, a Pinterest pin generates more than 10 repins—pins are 100 times more viral than tweets, which on average only get retweeted 1.4%.
- There’s an 82% jump in repin/pin patio for some brands with “rich pin” integration.
Adobe Announces Promising Circulation, Reader Engagement Data (Publishing Executive)
- According to Adobe, since the launch of DPS in 2011, 150 million DPS created publications have been delivered.
- Adobe has also seen a 115% increase in the number of downloads of DPS-built publications in a year-over-year comparison from November 2012 to 2013.
- Adobe also reports that DPS-created apps have three times as many unique monthly readers as they did one year ago. Currently, DPS powers the majority of all digital issues consumed on mobile devices, nearly 80%.
- On average, subscribers spend 50 minutes per month in DPS apps. That compares well to the 40 minutes readers reported spending with print magazines in a 2012 GfK MRI report.
Publishers Rank Native Ad Formats by Perceived Effectiveness (Marketing Charts)
- While more publishers (62%) have experience with native ads than brands (41%) and agencies (34%), each group intends to use native ads more in the next year, with the vast majority feeling that the formats add value to consumers, according to a new study conducted by Hexagram and Spada.
- According to the results of the study, the most commonly used native advertising types are blog posts (65%) and articles (63%), with a majority of survey respondents overall also using Facebook (56%) and videos (52%). Fewer use tweets (46%) and infographics (35%), although those formats are more popular among brands.
- When asked which forms of native advertising they think are most effective, publishers pointed to blog posts (58%) and articles (56%) first, with videos (53%) close behind. Videos were ranked atop the list by agencies and brands.
- 85% of publishers feel that native advertising offers them a new revenue stream.
Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube Referrals Up 52%+ in Past Year (Shareaholic)
- Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter collectively accounted for 15.22% of overall traffic in September. They top the list in traffic referrals and have grown more than 54% each in share of overall visits, from September of last year to the same month this year. Facebook grew 58.81%, Pinterest by 66.52% and Twitter 54.12%.
- StumbleUpon’s share of traffic driven to online publishers declined 27.47%. Reddit experienced a 35.16% decline in its share of referrals.
- YouTube’s and LinkedIn’s shares of overall traffic to publishers increased 52.86% and 34.51%, respectively.
- Although Google+ referred a fair number of visits to online publishers last month (0.04% is a substantial number when we’re looking at a data set of hundreds of millions of visits), it is hardly a leading referral source.
IAB: 72% of Publishers Are Now Using Programmatic Ad Technologies (AdAge)
- A new IAB study, conducted in conjunction with the Winterberry Group, found that 72% of publishers now participate in programmatic, closely following the vast majority of advertisers that do the same.
- Within the next two years, the number of participating publishers is expected to increase to 83%.
- According to eMarketer, programmatic ad spending is expected to increase by 73.9% this year and 35.8% next.
Digital Media to Average 15.5 Hours Daily by 2015 (PRNewser)
- According to a study by the Institute for Communication Technology Management at the USC Marshall School of Business, by 2015 Americans will consume media for more than 1.7 trillion hours, an average of 15.5 hours per person per day.
- Mobile messaging hours, which last year accounted for about 9% of voice call hours, will double to more than 18% of voice hours, a year-over-year growth rate of more than 27%, the report said.
- 6.9 zettabytes—that’s 6.9 million million gigabytes—of data flows to individuals and households in a year.
16-to-24-year-olds Say Ebooks Are Too Expensive (Voxburner)
- Results from Voxburner’s most recent Buying Digital Content Report found that 17% of 16-to-24-year-olds in the U.K. feel that ebooks need to be 75% cheaper than current market prices.
- Only 8% of young people found ebooks to be reasonably priced.
- The report found that 62% of 16-24s preferred to buy books as physical products.
Premium Publishers See Hope in ‘Native’ Sponsorships (eMarketer)
- eMarketer estimates that newspapers and magazines will see digital ad revenue growth increase 5.6% and 13.3%, respectively, this year, according to new figures.
- It expects sponsorship ad spending to grow 24.0% to $1.90 billion this year in the U.S., compared with $1.54 billion last year—slightly up from eMarketer’s previous estimates from August.
- eMarketer estimates that nearly 20% of U.S. digital display ad spending will incorporate real-time bidding technology this year, up from single digits just a few years ago.
Media Metrics is a new monthly feature from Technology for Publishing, aimed at keeping you armed with the latest industry data. If you’d like to share something you’ve read, drop us a note. And keep up with the latest industry news coverage by signing up for our This Week in Publishing emails or our monthly Publishing Trends newsletter.
Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini
