Bad first quarter for Advance Publications magazines in ad revenue, pages

It's not just newspapers that are suffering. MediaPost and other resources say the Newhouse magazine arm Conde Nast suffered a 31 % drop in advertising pages Jan-March 2009 compared to the same time period a year earlier. Gawker says the magazines lost $200 million and compares numbers for 23 of the magazines.

Only the organization's Golf World magazine improved - up 0.2%, according to the New York Times.

Not that misery improves with company, but the Talking Biz blog reported that all business magazines had an'Incredibly bad first quarter for biz magazines in ad revenue.'

The business blog reported a decrease in first-quarter advertising revenue and advertising pages after looking at data released Wednesday by the Publishers Information Bureau.

Among the largest declines was Wired magazine, which saw a 50.4 percent drop in ad revenue to $10.2 million and a 57.2 percent drop in ad pages to 113.14 during the first three months of the year.

Talking Biz says overall, the magazine industry experienced a 20.6 percent drop in ad revenue and a 26.1 percent decline in ad pages for the quarter.

Conde Nast Portfolio reported a 48.8 percent drop in ad revenue to $4.1 million for the quarter. Its ad pages fell 60 percent to 66.05. But the publication cut the number of issues it's now printing.

(While I am talking about Portfolio, look for its take on "USA Today fights for life" with a blog. It's worth the search.)


See all of the magazine data here