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As media becomes more and more expensive, advertisers resort to some very predictable tactics- reduce the number of publications in the plan, reduce the number of insertions or simply reduce the size of the ad. These trends come out very well from an analysis accomplished by TAM ADEX on Print Revenue data for the last decade on top Newspapers and Magazines.

If we just focus on the size aspect mentioned above, the results are absolutely stunning! While so far publications have blamed TV for stealing revenues from Press, very few studies have shown the effects of reducing ad sizes in the overall decline in press revenues.

Consider this, if a Newspaper was getting a 100cc ad in 1995, he will perhaps get an ad lesser than 80cc today (see Chart1) indicating a sharp 20% drop in ad sizes for Newspapers in the last 7 years!

Chart1:

In fact, the problem has got even more acute in recent years with the fall in 2001 being the steepest! Media Specialists assign this to the developments in both TV and Print. Not only did press rates go up in 2001, the costs on TV also went up dramatically that year thereby forcing a spiraling down effect on ad sizes in press.

So how did Magazines face up to these challenges? Did they maintain the proportion of large Double Spread ads? Unfortunately no! Magazines have been hit harder than Dailies (See Chart 2). As is evident from the chart, if a magazine was roughly getting a 1 & a half page ad in the early 90s, today that same ad has got reduced to a single page ad!

Chart2:

In fact, it's interesting to see what has changed from the last 8 to 10 years. For instance, in the last 8 years, while revenue contribution from Quarter Page ads has jumped by 12 times, the same for Double Spread ads shows a reverse trend (see Chart 3). Double Spread ads have come crashing down (from 39% to only 15%). However, Half Page and Full page ads are increasing. This again exposes the need that advertisers have felt to say the same message in lesser space with rising media inflation!

Chart3:

So the question is how would Publications cope with this decline? There are obviously no easy answers… but print groups would have to focus on getting the largest size ads for themselves in any multi-size campaign. Perhaps larger sizes would need to be incentivised. A Publication Group's focus on the negotiation table with media buyers clearly needs to move from 'inclusion in the plan' to 'increase in share'!

Atul Phadnis, director, S-Group, TAM Media Research
(All numbers courtesy: TAM Press ADEX)