The Presence of Magazines on the Internet

Posted on November 29th, 2006
By Erin Teeling in Bivings, Newspaper Study, Research, Technology, Web 2.0, Website review

TBG has recently completed a research study called "Analyzing the Presence of Magazines on the Internet". In the wake of success surrounding our previous newspaper study, "The Use of the Internet by America's Newspapers ", we decided to conduct similar research on the magazine industry. Our study reviews the websites of the top 50 most circulated magazines in the United States and evaluates them based on the presence or absence of various Web 2.0 features. After finishing the research, it became clear that magazines are not making use of Web 2.0. Despite their failure in terms of Web features, it should be recognized that magazines have taken on a more effective general strategy than newspapers when it comes to the Internet. Instead of replicating printed content online, as newspapers do, magazines have made efforts to publish unique, Web specific, and easily digestible materials on their websites. In this way, magazines are using the Internet as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, their printed publications. Magazine websites limit their article content and focus on pushing customers to purchasing printed subscriptions. Here are some key findings from our research:

The most common online feature offered by magazines is RSS feeds (48 per cent). All of the RSS feeds offered by magazine websites are partial feeds. In addition, none of the magazines are including advertisements in their RSS feeds, while just 28 per cent of magazines divide their RSS feeds into different sections.

Message boards/forums are offered by 46 per cent of magazine websites. This seemingly old-fashioned form of communication is extremely popular on magazine websites, particularly on the sites of women’s magazines.

38 per cent of the magazines require registration to view all of the site’s content. While this feature is only present on 23 per cent of the nation’s top 100 newspaper sites, it seems that magazines are still heavily reliant on website registration. It must be noted, however, that newspaper and magazine online registration is very different. The large majority of the magazines we investigated allow users to view article content free of registration. However, to participate in forums, registration is required. This seems to serve as a mechanism for monitoring content that people post on message boards rather than to collect demographic information, as is the case with newspapers. Thus, this 38 per cent figure largely represents magazines that require forum registration, not registration for the purpose of reading articles.

40 per cent of the magazines offer at least one reporter blog. Readers can comment on 17 of the 19 magazine blogs, while eight reporter blogs offer blogrolls, or external links to other blogs.

Video is an offering on 34 per cent of websites.

Just 14 per cent of websites use podcasts and bookmarking; eight percent allow comments on articles; and six per cent use tags.

You can read the report in its entirety here and view our data sheets here Please take a look and let us know what you think!

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Comments

David Scott Lewis

November 30th, 2006 at 10:12 am

You left out an EXTREMELY important question: What percentage of magazines offer some sort of e-newsletter option, either to specialized e-newsletters culled from printed content or a digital copy of the printed magazine?

Yes, WE all love RSS, but I’ve found that the higher one goes on the corporate food chain, the less likely they are to use RSS — and prefer receiving e-newsletters. Maybe you didn’t ask this question because it’s not Web 2.0, but it’s still an extremely important question relative to which digital alternatives are really desired by printed magazine readers.

Something like Second Life gets a lot of attention in our universe, but in the real world, it may get attention (the cover of Business Week, for instance), but little sustainable traction across broad industries. Yeah, it’s cool for Sun and some consumer packaged goods companies, but it’s hardly ready as a mainstream marketing tool. Way too early.

Anyway, e-newsletters rule in the real world, even if they’re not Web 2.0. That’s a fact that can’t be denied.
Todd Zeigler

November 30th, 2006 at 11:18 am

David,

Good point. Perhaps we’ll loop back on e-newsletters and see how prevalent that is at some point.

Thanks for the suggestion.

TOdd
JD

November 30th, 2006 at 8:50 pm

This misses a big differentiator among magazines — frequency (either weekly or monthly). Weeklies have heartbeats approaching newspapers, while monthlies have more evergreen content. Also, as it compared circulation figures of weeklies directly against monthly, this really isn’t a rank-ordered list of the 50 biggest magazines (People, for instance, is the biggest boy on the block here, and there are a number of weeklies in the 300,000-900,000 circulation range that are larger than those on the list).
Todd Zeigler

November 30th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

JD - great point. We’ll go in and see if we can divide the data between weekly and monthly and see if there is a difference.

Thanks for the distinction.

Todd
David Berkowitz

December 5th, 2006 at 12:30 am

Great research. Thanks for contributing to the broader industry knowledge.
Bien

January 7th, 2007 at 2:24 am

Very informative article. Gives us an idea what big companies are thinking which small companies can leverage from. Thanks for the research.
Bien

January 7th, 2007 at 2:26 am

Very informative article. Gives us an idea what big companies are thinking which small companies can leverage from. Thanks for the research!
Ryan

November 14th, 2007 at 11:57 am

The consumer magazine subscription is still alive and full effect. Although the article was timely and relevant, I’d like to believe that people still enjoy the old fashioned luxury of sitting around and sifting through pages of entertainment and beyond. Online magazines have become a thing that will not remain strong - I know, I sell magazines and sales have been moving along steadily. There has been no decline, people just don’t find the same satisfaction with sitting in front of a computer as they may hanging on a couch, beach, plane, etc.
Ryan

November 14th, 2007 at 11:58 am

http://www.MagazineDiscountCenter.com is still in effect even after the drive of onlien consumer magazines. The consumer magazine subscription is still alive and full effect. Although the article was timely and relevant, I’d like to believe that people still enjoy the old fashioned luxury of sitting around and sifting through pages of entertainment and beyond. Online magazines have become a thing that will not remain strong - I know, I sell magazines and sales have been moving along steadily. There has been no decline, people just don’t find the same satisfaction with sitting in front of a computer as they may hanging on a couch, beach, plane, etc.

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