Forbes finishing year with record readership

Forbes Media announced Wednesday that it will finish 2014 with record readership for Forbes magazine and visitors to Forbes.com.

According to recently released GfK MRI Fall 2014 data, Forbes magazine has achieved its highest readership ever in the U.S., increasing by over 1.5 million readers in the past year to 6.7 million.  Forbes increased its U.S. readership from 5,185,000 in the Fall 2013 to 6,706,000 in the Fall 2014 — a rise of 29 percent and the largest figure for Forbes in MRI’s records.

From June through November 2014, Forbes magazine was the only business magazine to grow – increasing 10 percent and adding 588,000 new readers in the U.S.  Forbes’ average issue readership is now larger than its top two competitors combined.  Forbes continues to maintain the majority market share in its competitive set with more than 37 percent of pages and 38 percent of advertising revenues, according to Kantar Media January-November 2014.

“It’s rewarding to see our print magazine numbers surging in lockstep with our online growth,” said Randall Lane, editor of Forbes magazine, in a statement. “Too many people see print versus digital as a binary choice.  The right answer is both – when each is clicking, they make the other stronger.”

According to comScore U.S., unique visitors to Forbes.com rose 20.5 percent from November 2013 to November 2014, bringing Forbes’ multi-platform monthly visitors to 31.4 million. Almost 45 percent of traffic to Forbes.com comes from mobile.

On LinkedIn, according to NewsWhip’s October 2014 report, Forbes was named LinkedIn’s Most Shared Publisher, with over 450,000 shares.  About 12 million people are currently connected to the Forbes brand across two dozen social groups on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest and Tumblr.