TargetCast tcm Advertising Week Panel: The Future of Magazines

Moderator: Audrey Siegel, EVP Director of Client Services TargetCast tcm

• Myrna Blythe, Editor in Chief, Betty Confidential
• Donna Campanella, Executive Director, Global Media, Avon Products, Inc.
• Mark Ford, President & Group Publisher, Time Inc. News Business Unit
• David J. Steinhardt, President & CEO, IDEAlliance

Moderator's Note: Panel moderator, Audrey Siegel, EVP Director of Client Services TargetCast tcm, summed it up this way, "Magazines offered advertisers the original community medium - one in which consumers raised their hand, one at a time, to involve themselves in a community of interest, driven by strong editorial content. The industry has seen that singular position usurped by first the cable networks, and now even more intrusively by on line media. Now is the moment for magazines to act, and not just reclaim that intimate relationship between the reader and the brand, but to more importantly re-craft the relationship so that it is relevant and sustainable for the future".

Panel Summary:

Established magazines, often iconic brands, have begun to lose advertiser support after years of consistent readership and inspiring content. As a result many venerable titles have had to cut distribution or close their doors. At Advertising Week, TargetCast tcm convened a panel of industry experts to debate the future of magazines and some of the fundamental challenges and dramatic changes facing the industry.

Experts representing many areas of the industry agreed that magazines need to adopt new technologies to better address the evolving demands of readers, in terms of content, costs, media platforms and delivery schedules, and to confront the concerns of advertisers relative to targeting, addressability, measurement and transparency. These same subjects surfaced repeatedly in the newspaper and radio panels that TargetCast tcm also held at Advertising Week.

The long-term viability of traditional printed magazines depends on how quickly the publishing industry can make these changes while reducing costs, expanding content and monetizing the brand appropriately across multiple media platforms. The magazine brand will continue to be important in driving readership, but in the new media universe, the ingredients of brand loyalty extend well beyond content and service to format, speed, media platform and relevance within the many communities it serves.

There was also general agreement that the next 18-months will be a critical 'tipping point' where magazines will have the opportunity to move forward and embrace an evolving media landscape or fall by the wayside. In particular, e-readers have an enormous potential to revolutionize the distribution of what is currently regarded as 'print'. A new generation of wireless, color e-readers will appear in the next year or so to provide both publishers and readers with enormous advantages in regard to costs, convenience, speed, information access, accountability and precision targeting.

Precision targeting, analytics and measurement were all issues raised by the panel as critical to reinvigorating advertising support and maintaining the profitability of magazines in any form. In fact, all print publications need to offer better models of accountability and measurement which go well beyond circulation and begin to qualify readership with guarantees on audience delivery.

Accountability issues become even more important as magazines and other publications continue to expand into new delivery platforms with targeted or platform specific content. There needs to be a multi-media measurement system that can evaluate content delivery and readership across platforms and in some cases across brands. In an interesting adaptation of advancing technologies, Time Inc. is looking into offering a flexible 'brand' subscription service where consumers would be able to move from one Time Inc. publication to another with short notice.