What you need to know:

• Are Media has grown its magazine audience by 11 per cent year-on-year – nearly triple the growth of the broader magazines market.
• Those gains are giving it confidence to push more aggressively into new editorial products and revenue streams, with e-commerce and affiliate marketing major bets.
• Beautiful Home now has a digital marketplace, and Are will next roll out another for The Australian Women's Weekly followed by marketplaces across all group verticals: lifestyle, entertainment, fashion and beauty, and home.
• Sales Director Andrew Cook is pushing a full funnel narrative to brands, touting its circa 10m female audience.
• But convincing media buyers to upweight ad investment to match audience growth remains a tough sell: SMI figures show media buyers increased magazine spend by 6.7 per cent and their digital arms by 2.1 per cent in the 12 months to June 23.
• Are is doubling down on helping brands connect with "high intent" audiences, pushing data from circa 50 pieces of research on women looking for specific products or services featured across its portfolio.

Comeback queens?

Are Media scoffed at those who say print is dead after growing its magazine readership by 11 per cent to 5.9 million in its most recent fiscal year – an additional 2 million also read its titles online, per Roy Morgan. 

The resurgence coincides with bringing back Elle in magazine format, which will run two issues next year and as a quarterly in 2025.

When Mercury Capital acquired Bauer’s magazine arm in 2020, it axed a slew of magazines, including Elle, Harper Bazaar, InStyle, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, NW and OK!. Are Media Director of Sales Andrew Cook said those grim Covid years, which decimated the consumer magazine market, are now firmly in the rearview mirror.

“What's fantastic is we're starting to see audience growth through our readership and across the board…we’ve had four consecutive quarters of audience growth,” Cook told Mi3 on the sidelines of Are Media Ignite at the NSW Art Gallery last week.

“Unlike some other media publishers, we’re held to account by an independent auditor (Roy Morgan) who's saying that magazines in terms of readership are coming back.”

Are Media’s readership growth is more than double the market – the latest Roy Morgan figures show that magazine readership increased by 4.1 per cent in the year to June 2023. 

Marketplace push

The Australian Women’s Weekly is the second most-read paid magazine with a monthly readership of 1.33m (behind stablemate Better homes & Gardens, 1.82m). Are thinks it can push beyond its total print and digital audience of 2.4 million.

The 90-year-old stalwart of women’s magazines has launched its own website, womensweekly.com.au; previously its content was published on Are Media’s aggregated platform Now to Love, alongside Woman’s Day, TV Week and Take Five. The website compliments a dedicated food site womensweeklyfood.com.au, which is home to 14,000 recipes, and a digital marketplace is set to launch later this year.

Home Beautiful, which launched a standalone website in July, has rolled out its own digital marketplace last week. These are part of Are Media’s digital strategy to move 15 websites onto new platforms optimised for user experience, streamlined content creation and content commerce by mid-2024.

The publisher also launched a Social Media Playbook to provide insights for brands with women across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Pinterest while recently inking a deal with Roy Morgan to measure its social media audiences as part of its Single Source database.

'Total funnel'

The transition of The Australian Women’s Weekly from print to omnichannel mirrors Are Media’s broader strategy to maintain, if not grow, print revenues via brand marketing dollars – which still make-up the lion’s share of its business – while investing heavily in a bid to land new lower funnel revenue growth via e-commerce and affiliate marketing. 

Are set out its stall last year after acquiring e-commerce business, Hard to Find. 

“We are not just about traditional print and digital, we're now across the total funnel,” Cook said. “We're seeing an increase in revenue, significant double digit growth, albeit off a small base, of those transactional opportunities, whether it's affiliate or ecommerce solutions.” 

Buyer bias?

Although around 50 per cent of Are Media’s sales are through direct relationships with brands, Cook admitted there are still hurdles to overcome in shifting perceptions about print in an advertising industry that skews young.

“The advertising agencies who are doing a good job are still platform agnostic. They're trying to do the best work for their clients,” he said. “But there are a number of people in advertising agencies who are younger, let's call it under 30. I think we have a job to do to ensure that they understand what a magazine is, what it stands for, the brand identity and how it connects.

“The industry as a whole has a perception of print, be it magazines or newspapers, but our readership affirms that print is not dead and magazines are not dead. So when we are answering briefs, we can say with confidence that our readership is growing… and in our opinion we are the absolute authorities when it comes to understanding and connecting brands with Australian women.”

Follow the money

Are Media claims it reaches nine in 10 women across 36 different brands each year, including a magazine network reach of 7.9 million Australians every single month. These figures are backed up by Roy Morgan, a point several Are Media executives reminded the audience in a not so thinly-veiled swipe at rivals.

The firm cited Kantar research which suggests that advertising across Are Media brands drives 29 per cent higher brand awareness and 11 per cent higher purchase intent. 

Are Media Chief Executive Officer, Jane Huxley, said the company’s transformation is being built on “powerful content and brands that attract audiences of intention”. 

“What we know about our audiences is that they come to us with more intention than ever. They are looking for content to inform what they do and what they buy. They are looking for beauty advice, money advice, retirement planning, travel, recipes to cook – and they have the highest intention of all, which is to do something next. 

“Our business models are aggressively evolving to map closer to the intention of our audiences, as we have begun to expand our offering in video, lead generation, affiliate marketing, marketplace, licensing and merchandising.”