11 digital magazine stats that every marketer needs to know

Do you know where the digital magazine industry is moving or why?

You need to know where it is going, how things are evolving and what others say about it, so you can create a better strategy for your company.

Without any concrete evidence you don’t know which way to go, or what is the best digital publishing platform. This is why I selected 11 stats about digital magazines and what marketers should know about them.

• 42% of US adults reported having read one or more digital magazine issues in the last 30 days. (via Mequoda)

As we can see, the digital magazine consumption grew in 2016. If we go back one year, we will notice that in 2015 a total of 36.79% of US adults reported reading an average of 2.74 digital issues. In 2016, that number went up to 41.46% of US adults reading an average of 2.59 digital issues.

• 59% of magazine readers say the digital edition is most important (via Mequoda)

Over half of the US adults reported that the digital edition was the most important for them. Even if the web edition alone is a little below the print (33,99% – web vs 40,71% print) we can observe that the digital edition is preferred by more than half of the respondents. And this leads us to a very important conclusion: People are reading digital magazines on their laptops, smartphones or tablets.

• Men more likely to prefer digital and multiplatform, women print (via Mequoda)

They say that men are more likely to prefer the digital, multiplatform edition and women are more interested in print.

• 55% UK content marketers said that they use E-books and White Papers in their content marketing tactics (via CMI)

Let’s get local now and see what content marketers based in UK think about white papers and e-books. A recent case study from Content Marketing Institute shows that more than half of content marketers use ebooks and whitepapers in their content marketing tactics.

• 57% manufacturing marketers said that they use Print Magazines in their content marketing tactics (via CMI)

Joe Pulizzi predicts about content marketing in 2017 that more brands will launch print magazines in 2017 to cut through the clutter.
And we can see this already happening from this year’s statistics which reveal that more than half manufacturing marketers said that they use print magazines. And they will probably still use them in 2017.

• 73% of Australian content marketers said they use print to promote their content (CMI)

Continuing with print, we can see that Australian marketers are using this type of marketing to promote their content.

• 68% of Australian content marketers said print is in the top 3 most important channels to distribute content (CMI)

Print is so valuable for the Australian market that they voted it in top 3 most important channels to distribute content.

Well, my friends, print is not dead!

• Technavio’s analysts forecast the global digital magazine publishing market to grow at a CAGR of 20.36% during the period 2016-2020 (via ReportBuyer.com)

The global digital magazine publishing market is growing substantialy because of the penetration of the internet and also due to the extensive use of mobile devices. I believe that every one of us reading this has used their personal device to read an ebook or download a white paper at least once this year.

• 34% of North American B2B firms use microsite ebooks (via CMI )

CMI launched a Content Marketing Playbook in 2013, in partnership with Brightcove, Oracle and Eloqua, in which they presented 24 ideas to inspire your content marketing strategy.

In 2013 Dell launched a Social Media Prediction ebook in which they presented a summary of key observations. This helped them get more than 150,000 views on Slideshare and build social media awareness.

• Digital edition magazine readers are young, educated and coming from households with above average income. (via MPA)

Yes, these are the millennials that everybody is talking about which are digital natives. This generation is exploring new digital territories, a market that is changing every day.

It’s a well known fact that millennials understand the value of virtual communities. Millennial entrepreneurs engage with or create online communities to promote their businesses.

• Digital edition readers are spending on average 54,3 minutes per issue (via MPA)

This is one of the struggles that many marketers have to face. How much time will a user spend consuming a piece of content? As we can see in this study conducted by The Association of Magazine Media, the average digital edition reader spends almost an hour per issue.

Conclusion

Here you go: the 11 digital magazine stats that you should know about when you want to create a digital magazine, ebook, or white paper for your next content marketing project.

Now back to you! Let me know in comments which one of these stats gave you an idea for a content marketing project and why.

---

Author: Robert Katai
Visual marketer, blogger, and brand evangelist at Creatopy, a professional banner creation app for designers & marketers. Passionate about visual marketing, Instagram, content marketing, and always up-to-date with the latest trends.