Hitting the ad page wall; business press revenues are growing, but pages are not. Can the industry recoup the ad page growth of yesteryear?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 1989 by Jean Marie Angelo

Changing selling strategy

Rosenfield believes, too, that part of the solution lies in changed selling strategy. Sales representatives no longer concentrate on selling schedules. The switch in thinking came with the 1973 oil embargo, he says. That year was a difficult one for the business press. Inventories were being controlled, and companies didn't want to release long term budgets. "It became dialing for dollars," says Rosenfield. Sales representatives were being pushed by publishers to get the next page for the next month.

"Now we're at a point where publishers and their representatives have to improve their image," says Rosenfield. "Sales representatives must become recognized as marketing authorities. Sales reps have to communicate more effectively on how their magazines can help advertisers grow their businesses profitably," he asserts.

Will the new attention to value added services increase the business publishers market share in the years to come? It remains to be seen. Perhaps we will have a business press where the giants get bigger, and the smaller companies that do not invest in the services fall by the wayside.

"I don't know what magazines can do to compete," says Sinha. "Unless magazines put together some good value that they can add, nothing much is going to change," he says.

"We can't survive if we are one dimensional," adds Marino of Penton. "We'll see more unique ideas than we've ever seen before in our business. Those of us who lead will be the ones who win. It won't be easy. There will be some blood on the floor."

PHOTO : These 79 business magazine categories, shown here and on the following two pages, lost a cumulative total of approximately 50,000 advertising pages from 1985 to 1988. However, advertising revenues for these top 79 markets grew 3.75 percent. These markets, which reflect 516 magazines measured, are bringing in more advertising dollars per ad page. Advertising revenue per page is up an average of 33.64 percent for these markets. The data in this chart and the others shown here were supplied by four tracking services: Patterson Advertising Reports, C-Systems, Rome Reports and Gallagher Reports. Additional ad page information came from other miscellaneous sources. The information is intended to be a guideline on performance, not an exact measurement of all business magazines, since all the tracking services have varying standards and methods of tracking.

PHOTO : These 25 categories are bringing in the most money per advertising page. This measurement, also called the yield, is calculated by dividing the total advertising revenue for a category by the number of ad pages.

PHOTO : Only 6 of the top 25 markets have increased page count from 1985 to 1988. The top category, automatic data systems, reflects the growth in computer titles during the second half of the 1980s.

PHOTO : Some markets are hurting more than others. Here are the 25 markets that have lost the most pages between 1985 and 1988. As expected, many of the heavy industrial markets are on this list.