From Advertising Age - Full story here

Google Stocks Up on Print and Outdoor Ads for Privacy-Focused Campaign

'Good to Know' Will Run in USA Today, Wall Street Journal and The Economist

Interesting story from AdAge

Why It's Getting Harder to Find a Good Magazine Newsstand

Problem Partly Began When Convenience Stores Dropped Skin Titles

by Nat Ives
Published: January 19, 2011

AP

And you can blame some of that decline on convenience stores' decisions to stop carrying skin mags. But more on that in a moment.

Although subscriptions comprise the vast majority of most magazines' circulation, newsstand sales are crucial for the impulse purchases that can lead to subscription commitments.

And single-copy sales have been experiencing a long swoon, falling 5.6% in the first half of 2010 from the first half a year earlier, 9.1% in the second half of 2009, 12.4% in the previous six months and 11.1% and 6.3% in the halves before that, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

After the 'men's sophisticates' go...
There are plenty of reasons for the sales declines, but a falling number of retail outlets for magazines doesn't help. Convenience stores that sell magazines have declined significantly, partly because many decided to ditch magazines like Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse, according to Gil Brechtel, president-CEO of MagNet.

"A lot of convenience stores no longer sell the 'men's sophisticates,'" Mr. Brechtel said. "It's really when they were popular or when they were selling men's sophisticates, their volume was enough that wholesalers could go to them and make a profit. When you eliminate men's sophisticates, probably 70% to 80% of their volume was removed and made everything less profitable for wholesalers."

Even as specialty retailers such as Home Depot and Linens 'n Things have increasingly stocked magazines, meanwhile, big box stores such as Walmart have been driving smaller superettes and local drug stores out of business.

Smaller volume at Linens 'n Things
Walmart has been giving less prominence to magazines in its own stores, moving the big magazine racks to the back, Mr. Brechtel said. And Linens 'n Things just doesn't generate the same newsstand sales as a traditional store with a wide selection of titles.

So are the declines impossible to slow or stop?

"The other factor has been the economy," Mr. Brechtel said. "When the economy improves we will see a steadying of single-copy sales. I would think that there will probably be a continual decline, but perhaps not as quick as previously."

Follow Nat Ives on Twitter.

Ad Age on "Why Forbes, Fortune Really Hope BusinessWeek Fetches More Than TV Guide Did:"

For all the challenges in the credit market, not to mention the tens of millions of dollars BusinessWeek is said to be losing, its competitors had better hope it can fetch a lot more than a lone greenback. Both Forbes and Fortune are profitable, but a token dollar transaction for their competitor would represent a vote of very little confidence in the future of their category.

That's because, despite specific circumstances that helped BusinessWeek slide into the red, they're all facing pretty much the same questions: If ad-page sales don't regain their old momentum, how well can they make digital compensate? Can they continue to meet the needs, and capture the dollars, of their particular advertisers, who are changing pretty rapidly themselves? What will be their story after the recession ends?

"Offline those brands have an opportunity to be around for some time, but I think they'll be smaller and smaller offline, while online they can be bigger and bigger," said Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller last Thursday, following the news last week that he was leaving after nine years.

"Any business title that is not drawing most of its revenue from digital within, say, three years will most likely not be in business," he added later. "Even with a recovery, I simply do not see huge ad revenues coming back to print."

As a follow up to our diatribe yesterday on BusinessWeek consider this typically snarky comment from AdAge:

"Why the persistent drop for the business bibles? Business-to-business advertisers have found many more efficient, targeted ways to reach their customers. Brand campaigns remain an important component of their marketing, but they've also gotten much better at maintaining databases of the crucial decision makers who buy their products or services, focusing on preserving their loyalty and contacting them more or less directly than through a major magazine ad buy."

If you are in print - newspapers or magazines - this comment should really bug you. The author, Nat Ives, is wrong about the potential for print publications to generate response for non-branding campaigns but he is expressing a sentiment which is common in the advertising world. In other words, the advertisers you covet think he is right about magazines being a branding advertising medium. Further proof, that if print publications don't start proving response to their customers using any number of rudimentary tracking mechanisms (800#s, text addresses, unique urls), no one will.

Ad Age maintains the New York Times can't survive past 2011 unless the Sulzbergers sell.

From Ad Age: Given the company's dwindling revenue and that looming debt, more and more people seem to be concluding that the Ochs-Sulzberger family's control is at risk. As Henry Blodget argued on Silicon Alley Insider this year, "Even if the Sulzbergers still don't want to sell the paper, they may have to give up control to save it."

Michael Wolff told Ad Age he couldn't see a way for the Sulzbergers to hold on. "Within a very short period of time, 12 months, maximum 18 months, there will have to be a control transition at the paper," he said.

Read the whole story here.

1. Peak year for revenue. 2. Projection. Source: Times Co. filings (2000, '06-08); Standard & Poor's ('09-'10 projections); Ad Age ('11 projection). Potential asset sales could reduce future revenue.