While magazines' print ad pages were flat in the first half of the year, publishers continued to see a nice uptick in growth in sales of iPad units, which increased by 25% in the period.
Using figures from Kantar Media, the Publishers Information Bureau looked at the 58 titles that reported ad sales both in print and in their iPad editions. Collectively, the magazines sold 24,566 print ad pages between January and June, a 1% decrease from last year. They also sold 14,272 iPad ad units, up from 11,461 last year.
Despite the solid growth in sales volume, the figures suggest that iPad ads are commanding only a fraction of the dollars that print ads do. The total number of ad units sold (print plus iPad) increased 7% to 38,838, but ad revenues increased only 0.4% during the period.