Most magazines witnessed a slight decline in print ad sales in the first quarter of the year, with a few exceptions in the food, beauty and fashion categories. But while print sales were lackluster, one area did see a nice uptick in growth: sales of ads on iPad editions.
The Publishers Information Bureau surveyed 58 magazine titles about the number of print ad pages and iPad ad units each sold between January 1 and the end of March. On average, those titles sold around the same number of print ad pages as they had in the same period the previous year. Those titles did, however, manage to sell nearly a quarter (23.6%) more ad units on their iPad apps. As such, the iPad now accounts for 56% of all magazine ad units sold across print and iPad (at least for those surveyed).
Interestingly, publishers were able to sell ads on the iPad, as well ads on their websites, to advertisers who don't typically -- or perhaps no longer -- advertise in their print pages. While the number of unique companies who advertised in print declined 4% to 2,778, the number of total advertisers across print, iPad and web grew about 15% to 9,621 in the magazines surveyed.