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 social media use, advertising, the tablet market, and print vs. digital.

Study: Women Love Social Media More Than Men Do (Unless It’s LinkedIn) (Adweek)

  • Pews Research Center, Social Media Use 2012-2013According to a Pew Research study, 76% of online U.S. adult females use Facebook, compared to 66% for online males, while fairly similar women/men percentage splits exist for Twitter (18%/17%), Instagram (20%/17%) and Pinterest (33%/8%).
  • One-third of women are now using Pinterest.
  • Pew said 24% of Internet-using men employ LinkedIn compared to 19% of women.
  • Seventy-three percent of online consumers now utilize at least one social media channel, and 42% use multiple ones.

Cross-Platform Magazine Advertising Up 6% (Folio)

  • Magazines saw combined ad units for print and tablet products grow 6% in 2013, according to a joint study by Kantar Media and the MPA.
  • Measuring 69 publications that have both print and tablet products, the report found tablet unit sales up 16% year-over-year.
  • Print ad pages were flat though, rising just 0.1% for the selected titles in 2013.

Digital Magazine Circulation Rates Soar in 2013 (Good E-Reader)

  • The total number of digital magazines downloaded every week increased from 300,000 per week in 2011 to a staggering 2 million per week by the end of 2013, according to figures from Adobe, whose Digital Publishing Suite powers around 80% of all digital magazine editions currently in circulation.
  • Adobe has confirmed that over the past year, the total number of subscribers to digital publications has more than doubled to 150 million, representing an increase of 115% over November 2012, and the total unique monthly readership of publications has tripled from October 2012 to October 2013.

Big Publishers’ Top 10 Stories Make Up 20% of Their Facebook Shares (NewsWhip)

  • According to November data from NewsWhip’s content discovery tool Spike, the five biggest social publishers on Facebook — the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Upworthy, CNN and the Daily Mail — get 20% of their shares from their biggest 10 stories.
  • Upworthy is an outlier: In November, the site’s 10 biggest articles made up 40% of its total Facebook interactions for the month.

U.S. Mobile Internet Traffic Nearly Doubled in 2013 (The New York Times)

  • In the United States, consumers used an average of 1.2GB a month over cellular networks in 2013, up from 690MB a month in 2012, according to Chetan Sharma, a consultant for wireless carriers, who published a new report on industry trends.
  • Worldwide, the average consumption was 240MB a month in 2013, up from 140MB in 2012, Sharma said.
  • Sharma said the uptick in data use could be attributed, at least partly, to the widespread coverage of fourth-generation network technology, called LTE, which carriers say is 10 times faster than its predecessor, 3G. He said the rise was also connected to the popularity of phones with bigger screens, like the newer iPhones or Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, which download bigger images.
  • Cisco, the networking company, predicts that Internet traffic from mobile devices will exceed that of wired devices, like desktop computers, by 2016.

Tablet Growth to Slow to 22% in 2014 (MediaPost)

  • Research firm IDC is revising downward its forecast for worldwide tablet shipments slightly in 2013 to 221 million from 227 million units.
  • Still, that will mark a 53.5% gain over 2012 levels. Growth for tablet shipments, however, will slow to 22% in 2014 for a total of 270.5 million units, and to single-digit percentages by 2017 — when it will peak at an estimated 386 million units, which is down from the previous forecast of 407 million.
  • Demand for so-called phablets, or oversized smartphones, is playing a part in slowing tablet growth.
  • Android is expected to end 2013 with 60.8% share of the global tablet market, followed by iOS, with 35%, and Windows, just 3.4%.
  • Android will maintain its dominance through 2017, when it is projected to have a 58.8% share, with Windows increasing to 10.2%, mainly at the expense of iOS, which will see its share fall to 30.6%.

Nothing Said You Made It in 2013 Like a Mag Launch (Crain’s New York)

  • While fewer print magazines launched in 2013 — 150, vs. 195 in 2012, according to MediaFinder.com — more are surviving. In 2012, 74 bit the dust. In 2013: 51.
  • Thirty-five online-only magazines launched in 2013, compared to 32 a year ago.
  • Food was the top category for launches, with 23 new titles, including Allrecipes, which Meredith Corp. spun off from its website of the same name. Regional titles were the second largest category, with 17 launches, including Scottsdale Magazine. Women’s magazines came in third, with 13, and included Bauer’s celebrity newsstand launch Closer.

Magazines See iPad Sales Grow, but Is It Too Little Too Late? (Mashable)

  • The number of ads purchased in 2013 for iPad editions of magazines rose 16%, according to a study by the Association of Magazine Media and Kantar Media.
  • Print ad units were almost unchanged from the year before, down a fraction of a percent. With print revenue comprising more than half of magazine revenues, news that print ad units were steady is a welcome relief.
  • Digital ads make up about 6.6% of overall magazine revenue, according to the Pew Research Center.
  • PricewaterhouseCoopers projects that digital ad sales, worth $25 billion in 2012, will drop to $23 billion by 2017.

Tablets Make Up Less Than 5% of Internet Use (AppNewser)

  • New figures from StatCounter show that tablets account for just under 5% of monthly web browsing.
  • Desktops continue to make up the bulk of the world’s web surfing — around 76% in November — while smartphones accounted for about 19%.
  • Apple’s iPad leads among tablets, making up around 75% of the devices’ Internet time. Next in line is Samsung, at 11%.
  • The iPad percentage is even higher in the United States, with 80% of usage, followed by Amazon’s Kindle at 7% and then Samsung at 4%.

Gallup Poll Ranks Journalists Low on Honesty, Ethics (Poynter)

  • Gallup released a poll of more than 1,000 adults on “U.S. Views on Honesty and Ethical Standards in Professions,” and journalists rank pretty low.
  • Just 21% of the people surveyed ranked newspaper reporters with high or very high honesty and ethical standards.
  • Next came lawyers, tying with 21%, followed by TV reporters at 20%, then advertisers at a miserable 14%.

Almost 70% of Readers Will Not Abandon Print Books: Ricoh Study (GalleyCat)

  • Nearly 70% of consumers feel it is unlikely that they’ll give up on printed books by 2016, according to a report from print company Ricoh and analyst firm IT Strategies with the University of Colorado at Boulder.
  • The main reasons for preferring print are that these consumers like the look and feel of a real book, they don’t have to strain their eyes to read print, and they like putting books on the bookshelf.
  • The study also claims that 60% of ebooks that are downloaded are not actually read.

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.

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Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini

Margot Knorr Mancini
A thought leader in the publishing industry, Margot Knorr Mancini has helped numerous publishers redefine their missions to become nimble content generators with the ability to repurpose content easily and efficiently. As Founder & CEO of Technology for Publishing, her analytical mind allows her to remain a step ahead of the industry, recognizing early trends and developing pivotal best practices.
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