Bauer dominates in four of Top 10 Magazine categories
Analysis of Roy Morgan’s latest readership results released for the 12 months to March 2019 shows that Bauer Magazines is the most widely read magazine publisher in four of the Top 10 Magazine categories: Mass Women’s Magazines, Motoring Magazines, TV Magazines and Women’s Lifestyle Magazines.
Bauer is a Top 3 publisher in a total of seven of the Top 10 categories which also includes Food & Entertainment Magazines, Home & Garden Magazines and Health & Family Magazines categories.Other publishers to perform well include Medium Rare which is the most widely read publisher for Food & Entertainment Magazines and Business, Financial & Airline Magazines and also Pacific Magazines which is the most widely read publisher for Home & Garden Magazines and Health & Family Magazines.
Medium Rare is the most widely read publisher in the most widely read magazines category of Food & Entertainment with 4.84 million reading the publisher’s Coles Magazine just ahead of the 4.83 million that read NewsLifeMedia publications including Woolworth’s Fresh.
Bauer dominates the readership in the widely read Mass Women’s Magazines category with over 2.9 million Australians reading Bauer Magazines including Australia’s most widely read paid magazine the Women’s Weekly ahead of second-placed Pacific Magazines with readership of 1,381,000 across magazines such as leading magazine title New Idea.
Leading publishers in the Top 10 Magazine Categories – 12 months to March 2019 (‘000)
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), April 2018 - March 2019, n= 51,362.
Pacific Magazines leads Bauer in the Home & Garden Magazines category with readership of 1,730,000 powered by Australia’s second most widely read paid magazine Better Homes & Gardens ahead of second placed Bauer on 939,000 led by House & Garden.
Bauer also leads readership in the Motoring Magazines category driven by the readership of Wheels and Street Machine, Women’s Lifestyle Magazines thanks to NW (New Weekly) and the TV Magazines category on the back of the readership of TV Week.
Mass Women’s Magazines appeal to older audience than Women’s Lifestyle Magazines
Analysing the audiences of Mass Women’s Magazines and Women’s Lifestyle Magazines shows that 79% of the readers of Mass Women’s Magazines and 84% of Women’s Lifestyle’s Magazines are Women however there are very different audiences for both categories when other demographics are considered.
The most likely consumers of Mass Women’s Magazines are older Australians in the Baby Boomer (born 1946-1960) generation while for Women’s Lifestyle magazines the appeal is strongest amongst the younger Millennials (born 1976-1990) and Generation Z (born 1991-2005).
There are similar trends at play for other leading magazine categories.
Motoring Magazines which have an audience overwhelmingly of men (84%) have their largest generational appeal to Australians in Generation X (born 1961-1975) and also have strong appeal to the younger Millennials and Generation Z.
In contrast Home & Garden Magazines with an audience that is just over two-thirds women compared to almost one-third men is a favourite of Baby Boomers and Generation X.
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan, says Australia’s 15.2 million magazine readers are keenly contested by Australia’s leading magazine publishers across a range of categories:
“Australia’s leading magazines compete with alternative titles within well understood magazine categories including Food & Entertainment Magazines, Mass Women’s Magazines, Home & Garden Magazines, Women’s Lifestyle Magazines, General Interest Magazines, Business, Financial & Airlines Magazines and others.
“Magazine publishers are constantly competing to gain an edge in a category by boosting the readership of their leading titles in that space against the competition. Often having a single widely read title is enough for a publisher to gain an advantage over rivals and draw in vital advertising dollars that won’t be going to the opposition.
“Analysing the latest Roy Morgan readership results for the year to March 2019 shows that Bauer holds the widest readership base in four of Australia’s Top 10 magazine categories including Mass Women’s Magazines with total readership of over 2.9 million, Motoring Magazines with overall readership of 690,000 and Women’s Lifestyle Magazines with nearly 450,000.
“In addition Bauer is second only to Pacific Magazines in the important Home & Garden Magazine Category with readership of almost 940,000 compared to 1.73 million that read Pacific titles.
“Publisher Medium Rare is the top publisher in the Food & Entertainment Magazine category on the back of the wide readership of the Coles Magazine and also leads in the Business, Financial & Airlines Magazine category thanks to the Jetstar & Qantas magazines. Pacific Magazines leads in two of the Top 10 magazine categories including Home & Garden as well as Health & Family.”
Roy Morgan’s readership figures are based on personal interviews with over 50,000 Australians over the last 12 months including around 4,000 interviews each month. The full Roy Morgan March 2019 magazine readership figures are available to view here.
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Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
