Roy Morgan has released its latest readership and cross-platform audiences for March 2015, with the figures showing mags in the food and entertainment space, and the house and garden arena, are the top performers in the industry.
Predictably, digital readership continues to grow with Roy Morgan seeing some magazine digital audiences such as Cosmopolitan, Time, Reader’s Digest and Gourmet Traveller, are nearing their print readership figures.
Home and garden mags continued to prove strong with eight out of ten posting increases in readership. The biggest growth was Bauer Media’s Belle magazine, up 15.9 per cent. Pacific Magazines’ Better Homes and Gardens was the only mag to grow in both print and digital.
Pac Mags’ marie claire remained the most read fashion magazine, with an average 375,000 readers per issue, according to the results.
Frankie and NewsLifeMedia’s Vogue vied for second place.
Pac Mags’ InStyle grew the most since the last figures, up 5.4 per cent.
Both Women’s Fitness and Women’s Health grew their audiences in the fitness sector, and over in the food space NewsLifeMedia’s Taste.com.au continued its growth. It’s now up to 428,000 readers per issue, which is 14.4 per cent higher than the same time last year.
And in the weeklies Bauer’s Woman’s Day still leads over Pac Mags’ New Idea, despite depleting readership from 1,557,000 readers a week to 1,232,000.
“The latest Roy Morgan readership results highlight magazines kicking goals in a tough environment,” said Tim Martin, general manager of media at Roy Morgan.
“It’s impressive to see a recently launched print title such as Taste.com.au figure in the Top 20 magazines read in the country—especially given its digital roots. It will also be interesting to see the effect of new Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana Windsor on the readership results of mass women’s magazines over the coming quarter.
“Major magazine publishers are investing heavily in their digital assets and content and we can see that starting to shine through in our cross-platform audience numbers.”
