NEA Task 3 : Research into the UK Magazine Industry

 The world magazine publishing industry is growing at a steady rate as it continues to grow between 1% and 0.5% per year and this is supposed to keep on happening until 2026. To keep the magazine industry on track as it continues to grow at a steady rate, the magazine publishers need to keep on finding innovative ways to keep their audiences engaged with the content that they are putting out and some examples of this include: getting readers to their website with specific links that will interest specific consumers and potential customers, mobile apps can be made to improve digital experiences for existing customers how would perhaps rather pay to view the magazine online rather than going to the shop to buy a physical copy. The future of the magazine industry could be big as the demand for magazines and advertising inside of them is still growing due to the wide range of magazines that target specific target audiences.

The UK magazine media market is still large as magazines accounted for almost £560.4 million in 2022 which would have been a large chunk of the money spent on advertising spends. The large advert spending numbers are accounted for as the top advertising companies included Apple, Chanel, Sainsbury's and more who would have spent large amounts of money on advertising their brand in different magazines. The large scale of the UK magazine media market can also be shown as magazine media reaches 76% of adults in the UK each month which would show the large scale of the industry in the UK as there are lots of consumers who are seeing and reading different magazines.

During the pandemic however the print magazine market had some damage as the lack of people buying physical magazines due to not being able to go out tot he shop and buy one was making the revenue in the industry plummet. This further meant that there was fewer magazines in circulation with 1.6 billion being circulated in the UK during the year 2000 compared to last year that statistic standing at 565 million. And although the figures have been on the rise again, the numbers are only slowly making up for the damage that the pandemic had on the print magazine industry. 

In the UK the leading companies in print magazines were Bauer Media, Immediate Media Company and Future Publishing Ltd as they had a combined 37% share of the market overall in terms or circulation. The most popular Magazines in the UK are as follows: National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Radio Times are all the top 3. The opportunity in the print magazine industry is that the lower figures for sales of print magazines can allow room for companies to shift to digital products rather than physical.