August is good ad sales month for business magazines

Business magazines posted a second straight strong month in terms of ad sales in August after reporting bad numbers in June, according to statistics on the Magazine Publishers of America web site.

For August, all business magazines except for Fortune and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance showed an increase in sales from the same month in 2005. Business 2.0 led the way with a 41 percent jump in ad sales.

Here are the specifics:

— Business 2.0’s ad sales for August were $3.8 million, up from $2.7 million in the same time period a year ago.

— BusinessWeek‘s August ad sales were $14.6 million, a 13 percent increase from the $12.8 million sold in August 2005.

— The Economist sold $3.7 million worth of ads for the month, up 21 percent from $3.1 million sold in August 2005.

— Forbes sold $8.3 million worth of ads last month, up 32.9 percent from the $6.25 million worth of ads sold a year ago.

— Fortune sold $14.8 million, a 12 percent decline from the $16.8 million sold in August 2005.

— Inc. magazine reported $5.8 million in ad sales, a 16.7 percent increase from $4.9 million sold in August 2005.

— Kiplinger’s sales fell to $2.4 million a 7.7 percent decrease from $2.6 million in the same time period a year ago.

— Money magazine sold $12.8 million worth of ads, a 27 percent jump from the $10.1 million sold in August 2005.

— Smart Money sold $3.9 million in ads, up from $3.6 million, or a 7.2 percent increase.

There were no August stats for Fast Company. The August numbers can be seen here.

Meanwhile, the year-to-date numbers show that BusinessWeek remains down 7.4 percent with $180 million sold through the end of August. It’s still behind Forbes, which has sold $189 million in ads for the first eight months. A year ago this time, BusinessWeek was ahead of Forbes by $22 million. Fortune is less than $2 million behind BusinessWeek at $178 million.