Lifestyle Magazines

Lifestyle Magazines

The market for men’s and women’s lifestyle magazines is, as with many other sectors of the consumer magazines market, experiencing difficult trading conditions at present. The print circulations of many of the leading lifestyle publications have been falling for more than a decade as consumers have moved away from purchasing the printed word and towards online, and often free, digital alternatives. The fall in the circulation of these lifestyle magazines, and in the consumer magazines industry as a whole, has led to a corresponding reduction in the amount of advertising expenditure across these magazines; this in turn has contributed to repeated falls in the value of the market. As such, Key Note estimates that in 2015 the value of the lifestyle magazines market in the UK fell by a further 2%.

The lifestyle magazines market consists of both women’s and men’s magazines. The women’s segment is by far the larger of the two markets and can be further segmented into weekly and monthly publications. The women’s weekly magazines market, which typically registers the highest average print circulation figures per issue in the lifestyle sector, has been the most affected by the reduction in print circulation numbers and many of the most popular and well-known weekly titles are reporting ongoing yearly declines. The women’s monthly magazine sector, meanwhile, has also been affected by falling print circulations and this has even led to some publications ending their print editions and becoming digital-only issues.