International mags give market a boost

According to the latest media survey by Nielsen Thailand, advertising spending via magazines continued to shrink, contracting by 15.51 per cent to Bt3.24 billion from Bt3.84 billion a year earlier.

Napaporn Jeatawattana, head of Mindshare’s marketing arm The Exchange, told The Nation that this decline resulted from the change in customer lifestyles in the digital era along with media fragmentation.

"Penetration by traditional media has gradually declined year by year. The decline in the magazine inventory is directly related to the change in media consumption behaviour," she said.

The top 10 product categories that appear in magazine adverts has remained unchanged but media investment for those products has been in a continual decline.

However, there is a trend for those product categories connected to specific markets to focus their ad spending on niche magazines, particularly fashion products such as furniture and decor, automobiles and watches, Napaporn added.

As media consumption becomes more fragmented, advertisers are also looking for suitable channels to reach targeted readers, while publishers are looking for international magazine titles to attract readers as well as advertising income.

"If newcomers [to the magazine market] provide outstanding and unique content and style, I believe they could share a piece of this cake," the head of The Exchange said.

Undoubtedly, during the past couple of years, lots of international magazine titles have appeared on the newsstands. Most of them offer focused content, such as on health, travel and do-it-yourself cooking and handicrafts.

For instance, Serendipity, a new company established by veterans of the magazine industry, recently revealed that the first Thai edition of the famous fashion magazine Vogue would hit bookshelves in February after having been published in 20 countries, including six in Asia. Additionally, a source in the fashion-magazine industry said several more titles were landing in Thailand, including Numero from France and Dazed & Confused from Britain.

Previously there were many magazine tiles already on bookstands, including Men’s Health, Attitude and 91-year-old fashion magazine L'Officiel owned by Editions Jalou in France.

These international titles can find good acceptance among those who recognise their reputation. This will be a good mix to cover the fragmented market, Napaporn said.

Another reason for this international influx is the fact that Asia’s economy continues to grow steadily, particularly driven by the Asean economic integration coming in 2015, while the reverse is true in Europe, where many of these titles have their head offices.

However, to survive amid changing lifestyles, Napaporn suggested that those magazine publishers able to move quickly into other media platforms such as the Internet and mobile telecommunication would be the ones who avoid stagnation.

The Thai magazine market is estimated to be worth about Bt5.2 billion, with fashion publications accounting for about 30 per cent of the market.