US Magazine Ads Down in ‘09

Surprised? I thought not.

Here’s a number that may scare you though: 58,340. That, according to the New York Times, is the number of ad pages that were lost last year from US magazine. The Times recently reported:

“Between 2008 and 2009, magazines lost, on average, one-quarter of their ad pages — the worst drop in the decade of data that the bureau, which measures virtually all major American magazines, had readily available. It is significantly worse than even 2001, when pages declined by 17.2 percent from the previous year. And magazines ran only about 170,000 ad pages last year, versus about 238,000 in 2001.”

One positive note: as you may remember from a post on this blog in November advertising did start to increase in some sectors in the winter months of ‘09. Not exactly a ray of shining hope, I know, but you have to start somewhere right?