Supermarket mags maintain top spot

Coles Magazine and Woolworth’s Fresh are Australia’s most widely read magazines, increasing their readership by 11.3 per cent and 13.1 per cent respectively in the year to December 2017, according to the latest Roy Morgan Australian Magazine Readership report.

The report says Coles Magazine reached 4,152,000 readers last year, slightly ahead of Fresh with 3,875,000 readers.

Overall, the report says, about 15 million people in Australia aged 14 and older read magazines whether in print or online (via the web or an app) in the year to December 2017 – virtually unchanged from the previous year.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says the medium retains a key role in reaching consumers increasingly “deluged” by an abundance of choice.

“The strong results for magazines catering to specific areas of interest show that magazines in print or online format can build loyal audiences who keep coming back to consume quality information underpinned by their level of in-built trust in the brand,” she said.

“In addition to the two market leaders, there were several magazines to show strong year-over-year growth, with the women’s fashion magazines category substantially outperforming the broader industry. Category leader Frankie grew its readership 19.7 per cent to 407,000 while rival Elle magazine was up 17.1 per cent to 171,000 and Vogue Australia increased 8.9 per cent to 355,000.”

The five most read categories of magazines, according to the report, are food and entertainment (read by 6,276,000 in Australia, up 6.7 per cent), general interest (4,484,000, down 0.8 per cent), mass women’s (3,356,000, down 5.3 per cent), home and garden (2,959,000, down 4.4 per cent), and business, financial and airline magazines (1,655,000, down 7.7 per cent).

Top 15 magazines: all categories – print readership