Wired to raise rate base

Wired magazine announced that it will raise its rate base, becoming the second business magazine after Bloomberg Businessweek to do so this week, reports Lucia Moses of Adweek.

Moses writes, “Wired, which has been buoyed by demand for its tablet editions as well as its print magazine, is doing just that. The Condé Nast monthly will raise its rate base by 25,000 in January, to 800,000.

“Advertisers have balked at the idea of paying for their ads to run in digital copies, at least until they get more information about readership of tablet editions, but Wired vice president and publisher Howard Mittman said tablet editions would likely be included in the rate base. It will no doubt help advertiser confidence that Condé Nast has said that it plans to release data about its tablet audience starting in the fall.

“Wired’s newsstand sales were soft for the first five issues of the year compared to the average for last year. But print subscriptions have been strong. And in the second half of last year, single-copy sales were up 28.2 percent over the same time period a year before that, helped by digital sales.

“The magazine also has been one of the company’s stronger sellers of iPad editions, moving more than 40,000 of them in June, when iPad subscriptions became available.”

Read more here.