According to a survey of 71 succesful magazine websites conducted by the International Federation of the Periodical Press, the overwhelming experience of magazine publishers who have websites is that they have attracted significant numbers of new audiences who do not read the brand in print. For many sites, the new audiences equates in size to 20% or more of the print audience. Most sites have gained new advertisers on the web who do not advertise in the print products. The proportion has risen from 53% in 2003 to 66% in 2005. The web-only advertisers are attracted by a range of factors. These include the interactive possibilities, the ability to receive sales leads or direct response, the size of the audiences available. 20% of the sites offer contextual advertising-that is, relating the ads shown on-screen to the keywords that surfers employ when using search engines.
There has been a rise in the proportion of sites which offer mixed-media printplus-web advertising packages to advertisers. The 2003 figure of 65% has risen in 2005 to 77%. According to the report “those site visitors who click through to an advertiser’s advertisement or website are highly valuable because they have shown themselves to hot prospects – “ready to buy” as one respondent put it. They have proved they are not only interested in the general subject area of the magazines’ website, but are also specifically interested in the advertiser’s products or services. “The Internet can be an excellent direct response medium”, the report concludes.
