Magazine subscriptions study points to power of Christmas

The research also showed the acquisition of new magazine subscribers has grown 22% from 2006 to 2009 despite challenging trading conditions.

It revealed new subscribers were most likely to sign up to a magazine subscription via the internet (37%), followed by email or other ways (32%) than through the post (16%) and telephone (16%).

The report also revealed that out of the proportion of actively-purchased titles, subscriptions totalled 20% of the share, according to latest ABC figures for the six months to June 2010. This represents an increase in magazine subscriptions of 1% year on year.

The project, called 'The UK Subscriptions Market – A Single Customer View', draws on data from 30 million subscriber records across 196 magazine titles from eight magazine publishers in the UK.

Publishers which contributed data to the report were Bauer, BBC, Condé Nast, Dennis, Future, Hachette, Haymarket, IPC Media and the National Magazine Company, which together comprise 60% of the UK ABC subscriptions market.

Nicola Rowe, director of circulation and member services, PPA, said: "It’s the first time that publishers have collaborated in this way in order to get a view of the UK subscriptions market as a whole.

We hope that this project will build year on year, with more publishers taking part and providing further insight into the industry."

The research, sponsored by Royal Mail and carried out in association with Datalytics and Wessenden Marketing, is available for PPA members to download from the PPA website.

This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk