Advertisers should realise that magazine readers have higher purchasing power: Anant Nath

Once thriving on readers' pleasure of flipping through glossy pages, the magazine industry in India found itself navigating uncharted waters since the pandemic. From upheavals in distribution challenges to shifts in reader preferences, numerous challenges have compelled the industry to redefine its strategies to thrive in this new landscape.

Anant Nath, Executive Publisher, Delhi Press and Editor, Caravan India opines that the impact on magazines has been similar to that on the rest of the publishing industry, where readership has shifted from print to digital.

Even though most magazine publishers, like most newspaper publishers, have websites, everyone struggled to make revenue out of that audience in their own way.

The number of digital readers is more than the print audience because digital media is far more accessible and more easily consumable. But monetising that readership, especially from an advertising point of view, has been far more difficult, as per Nath.

Alternate revenue streams will flip the story for magazines

A major challenge for the industry is to figure out how to fix the physical distribution system. The physical newsstand distribution system has been adversely affected much before COVID. 

“Subscription as an economy was much smaller in India as compared to magazine publishers in Europe and America. They were far more subscription-oriented. Indian magazine publishers were far more newsstand-oriented. But in the last four years, we have laid much greater emphasis on building subscriptions, which means putting in systems for better delivery of subscription copies,” he added.

The association has closely worked with India Post to roll out a new delivery service called Magazine Post. It has been extremely effective, reliable and as compared to private couriers, it is much cheaper. 

Along with that, most publishers have been far more aggressive in marketing subscriptions through a mix of online subscription marketing campaigns, database cultivation, and various other ways.

Hence, Nath sees that the road ahead for most publishers is to keep on increasing the subscription play by improving the efficiency of delivery distribution and partnering with some e-commerce players. 

“In the last year, we've partnered with Blinkit to create a widget within their app where consumers can order a copy. Similarly, now we're working with ONDC to create a magazine-specific, government-sponsored category so that all the ONDC-affiliated buyer apps like Paytm, Meesho and more have a magazine sale widget,” he added.

The association is also now working with India Post again to see how they can create new opportunities for selling subscriptions through the network of India Post.

Still, these methods may help the circulation and subscription revenue but magazines need to invent alternate revenue streams.  

Nath shares that traditionally, while they have been monetising it through advertising and circulation subscriptions, events have also been added as a layer. What other possibilities can there be for monetisation?

He underlined, “There are revenue possibilities through partnerships with e-commerce, affiliate marketing, audio streaming and video streaming services by creating new content IPs. Now there are membership programs too with models where readers engage with the magazine editorial teams closely.”

Perception among marketers needs to change

When it comes to reviving ad revenue, the industry needs to change perceptions about advertising in magazines. Nath added, “We need to translate our efforts to a sellable story to our marketers whom we need to work within a much closer proximity to explain how the industry has built back its readership and its circulation numbers.”

Technically speaking, advertisers need to understand that magazines have been attracting a substantial readership willing to pay for the content and are far more important than somebody who is accessing content free of cost, without any investment, commitment or connection, like the digital audience or even the newspaper readership since the papers are quite cheap. 

Nath highlighted, “A newspaper in India is priced at Rs 4 or 5 but a magazine is at Rs 60 to 100. So, a magazine reader is far more committed. We need to work with advertisers to say that this reader who has higher purchasing power, is far more engaged and trusts the magazine better is a better consumer for them.”

The more niche, the better

General interest content is being given a lot online; however, it's the niche magazine’s content that makes the difference. When the editorial team develops a certain expertise in the content, the readership gets more connected and is more involved since the content is closer to their interest. 

Nath added, “That's where your digital content will take a backseat because ultimately a very committed group of editors, reporters and writers are creating extremely in-depth content and will stand out compared to content that is created in a very superficial and fast-paced manner.”

Magazines as a concept will have a much brighter future, believes Nath. “The more niche, more tightly defined your audience is, the more substantial will be the readership. Of course, you need a certain basic size of the audience. If the niche is just a few thousand people, your chances of finding readership in those thousand people will be limited. So your niche has to be right,” he concluded