Over the last 12 months, fishing magazines Fishing World and Fresh Water Fishing Australia increased their readership by over 50 per cent each, according to the results from the Roy Morgan Australian Readership report for the 12 months to June 2019.
The report states that magazines within the ‘fishing’ category increased readership by 12.3 per cent to 310,000 due to the strong performance from leading title Fishing World, which increased by 53.4 per cent to 227,000 readers, and Fresh Water Fishing Australia, which increased by 55 per cent to 93,000 readers.
Other niche categories to perform well include magazines within the Computing, Gaming and Info Tech category, which increased readership by 1.8 per cent overall to 510,000 readers.
Roy Morgan said that Xbox magazine has now become the leading magazine in the category after increasing readership by 22.7 per cent to 146,000 just in front of Playstation magazine with a readership of 145,000 (up 2.1 per cent). Also increasing its readership was PC PowerPlay which increased 9.8 per cent to 67,000.
Other magazines to perform strongly included Healthy Food Guide up by 34.4 per cent to a readership of 262,000, Good Health up by 18.5 per cent to a readership of 295,000, Women’s Health up by 15.4 per cent to a readership of 344,000, and Fitness First up by 35.7 per cent to a readership of 95,000.
Overall, magazines within the Business, Financial and Airline category experienced a decrease of 6.3 per cent in readership over the last year to 1,520,000 (7.4 per cent of the population).
Despite the overall decline, three magazines in the category did increase their readership over the last year led by two of the airline magazines. Readership of Jetstar increased by 16.9 per cent to 277,000 while Virgin Australia Magazine increased readership by 1.8 per cent to 225,000. However Qantas Magazine remains the most widely read magazine in the category with 400,000 readers.
Also performing strongly was Schwartz Media’s The Monthly which increased readership by 1.3 per cent to 151,000.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said that 15.2 million Australians now read magazines in print or online, an increase of 1.2 per cent (+187,000 readers) compared to 12 months ago.
“The strong performance of Australia’s magazines with readership growth across a wide variety of magazines shows that even in an increasingly crowded media space with a proliferation of media choices for consumers, magazines have an enduring appeal and offer advertisers a direct line to over 15.2 million Australians,” she said.
For more information, visit the Roy Morgan website.
