Ugly month for ad sales for biz mags in November

Virtually every major business magazine reported negative ad sales in November in terms of ad revenue, according to data posted on the Magazine Publishers of America web site.

Only the Economist and Fast Company saw an increase in ad dollars in November compared to the same month in 2005. The British-based magazine was up 9.6 percent to $7.6 million, while Fast Company rose 14.9 percent to $3.5 million.

The ugly numbers showed that:

— Business 2.0 reported a 16.6 percent decline in ad revenue to $4.4 million for November, while BusinessWeek posted a 16.9 percent drop to $30.3 million.

— Entrepreneur magazine had an 8.2 percent drop in ad revenue to $8.8 million for the month.

— Forbes and Fortune both posted drops in ad sales in November after recording increases in October. Forbes declined 14.3 percent to $29.2 million, while Fortune dropped 11.3 percent to $31.2 million.

— Inc. fell a whopping 42.3 percent in ad sales to $5.3 million.

— Among personal finance magazines, Kiplinger’s and Money reported losses, while Smart Money eked out a small 2.1 percent gain. Kiplinger’s ad sales fell 31 percent to $2.9 million, while Money dropped 16.6 percent to $16.7 million.

The monthly figures can be found here. For the first 11 months of the year, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Fortune, Inc., Kiplinger’s and Money are all down in terms of ad revenue.

The question these publications need to be asking themselves is whether the decrease is just a temporary sliump in print advertising, or if their traditional advertisers have found somewhere else to put their money. One can assume that the advertising on the web sites for these publications has gone up in the past year as well.