Roy Morgan has released its March 2020 quarter cross-platform audience results for Australian magazines – the first results to be released since the coronavirus outbreak and mid-March lockdown.
Roy Morgan found an estimated 15.6 million (74 per cent) Australians aged 14+ read or accessed a magazine or magazine content.
The audience results are for the period from January to March 2020, and also include the first set of Apple News audience measurement numbers for the Australian market. The cross-platform audience data measures magazine masthead reach across print and digital content.
The cross-platform audience results can be seen here for participating magazines. The majority of magazines are mainstream titles, but the data is useful as it demonstrates how these magazines are augmenting their audiences using digital platforms.
In line with traditional digital measures, all results are four-week estimates, rather than print currency ‘average issue readership’ (AIR).
AIR is used to represent the number of percentage of Australians who read an average issue of participating magazine publications, providing an estimate of reach an advertiser can expect to achieve with advertising placed in the print publication. The AIR readership estimates for magazines are available to view here.
Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan said the new four-week cross-platform audience data shows magazines are reaching new audiences that aren’t attached to traditional media channels.
“Roy Morgan’s new ‘digital first’ view of the media landscape has highlighted the extraordinary reach of newspaper and magazine mastheads among the Australian population.
“The new four-week cross-platform audience results show millions of Australians are accessing their trusted media brands through digital channels.”
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan
She said that the digital-first analysis will allow publishers and brand advertisers to access the latest metrics to better plan campaigns and profile these audiences.
“Australians are increasingly consuming their favourite magazines via digital channels,” Levine said, while noting that several magazines continue to increase their average issue print readership compared to the previous year.
The five most-read categories of magazines by average issue print readership for the March 2020 quarter are:
- Food and entertainment (6,495,000 Australians, 31.1 per cent of the population);
- General interest (4,213,000 Australians, 20.2 per cent of the population);
- Home and garden (3,459,000 Australians, 16.5 per cent of the population);
- Mass women’s (3,151,000 Australians, 15.1 per cent of the population);
- Business, financial and airline (1,340,000 Australians, 6.4 per cent of the population).
Readership in each category has decreased compared to the previous quarter apart from the home and garden category.
The total number of Australians aged 14+ who accessed a magazine or magazine content (either in print or digitally) remained the same as the December 2019 quarter. It will be interesting to see how the results change for the June 2020 quarter, in which consumers have been heavily impacted by the coronavirus lockdown.
