After analyzing some of the largest national consumer magazines and their digital properties, we found some interesting trends we’d like to share with you. From desktop domination to mobile maturity, emergence of online video and where print stands – the advertising landscape continues to change. See how marketers are focusing their ad buys and remember to sell across platform. You may find some of the ideas listed below as new opportunities for your business.
Desktop Dominates
Desktop ads still lead in terms of sheer volume of advertisers. There were 17,931 desktop advertisers placing ads on consumer magazine publisher’s websites in Q4 2015. Does this make desktop the inadvertent winner? Desktop ads can be very effective in garnering high reach with a broad audience.
More than half of digital advertisers came from top 5 brand categories–Media & Entertainment, Retail & Wholesale, Professional Service, Technology and Financial & Real Estate. If these categories aren’t already your bread and butter industries, you may want to consider expanding your reach to these low hanging fruits.
Mobile and Native Gaining Traction
While desktop is still king, mobile continues to increase in year-over-year market share with 32% of digital advertisers buying ads on a mobile platform in Q4 2015. In addition, native is quickly gaining traction with native ads growing by 42% in Q4 2015 year over year. What digital ad formats are you selling? Mobile, native and online video are the high performing formats right now!
Auto-Start Video = More Engagement
Video is becoming the new ad format of choice—whether for linear TV or online video. Many publishers are initiating auto-start videos for higher user engagement with 64% of magazine media websites selling auto-start video ads in Q4 2015. Length of time for video ads is also key—but surprisingly, short ads seem to be most popular. Thirty-four percent of video ads sold in Q4 2015 were 15 second spots and 32% were 30 second spots.
Print Stays Strong
Print still has a definitive impact with 9,799 print advertisers placing 34,973 ad pages in national consumer publications in Q4 2015. Encourage advertisers to make the cross platform buy for print, video, mobile and digital to reach users on every touch point.
We forecast continued growth in high CPM ad units such as native and digital with new innovations on the horizon. It is now essential for advertisers to have total cross platform integration across print and digital.
