The decade-long decline in advertising for business magazines

Nat Ives of Advertising Age writes about the decline in advertising that has occurred among the three big business magazines during the past decade.

Ives writes, “A look at each title’s first-half ad pages over the last 10 years shows the affect of the prior boom and bust, along with this year’s sharp declines, but also suggests a long-term trend that’s more worrisome.

“Since 1999, the number of ad pages the three major business titles booked for the first half of the year has fallen by 64%. In 1999, BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune carried 6,193 ad pages in the first six months of the year. In 2009, that number shrank to 2,204. That means it’s likely the final year tally for the three won’t crack 4,500, a benchmark that all three managed to surpass on their own in 1999.

“Why the persistent drop for the business bibles? Business-to-business advertisers have found many more efficient, targeted ways to reach their customers. Brand campaigns remain an important component of their marketing, but they’ve also gotten much better at maintaining databases of the crucial decision makers who buy their products or services, focusing on preserving their loyalty and contacting them more or less directly than through a major magazine ad buy.”

Read more here.