Cosmopolitan - Audience and Advertisers

COSMOPOLITAN AUDIENCE

There are two types of audience for Cosmo Magazine (Readers and Advertisers)

Readers

Cosmo’s readers fall into the ABC1 Social Demographic. According to Hearst they are fashionable, fun, confident with key interests in shopping, beauty, and relationships. The main age group is 18-35 although the core readership is 20-25.

Cosmopolitan USED to be the biggest selling women’s monthly magazine available and would regularly sell 450,000 issues a month. However its circulation has been in decline constantly over the last 10 years and in 2011 it is only selling approximately 325,000 copies a month. Its sales fell 9% in 2010 and another 3% so far this year. It is now the 4^th best selling women’s monthly magazine (2^nd in terms of women’s fashion losing out on first place to Glamour).

The current cover price of an issue is £3.40. This means that Hearst UK earns approximately £1,105,000 a month from its readers buying the magazine.

Advertisers

Advertisers are the companies that pay to place adverts both in the printed version of Cosmo, and on the Cosmo website. Advertisers in Cosmo are generally companies that have the same target audience as Cosmo magazine. For example Muller Light Yoghurts, Gillete Venus Razors, Impulse Body Spray etc

Adverts can fall into a variety of categories including full page ads, double page ads, ½ and ¼ page ads, ads that feature free samples or tester strips, ads disguised to look like articles (advertorials) loose insert ads and there is even the opportunity for ads to be differentiated depending on the region of the country the magazine is going to be distributed to.

Costs for advertisers to place adverts vary immensely. The costs for full page ads vary from £18,000 to £25,000 depending on the part of the magazine the ad is placed in. As there are often up to 50 full page ads in an issue, Hearst can earn over £1,000,000 a month from full page ads in Cosmo alone!

According to the Guardian website, magazine advertising has fallen by 22% in the last 2 years alone and so magazine publishers like Hearst are desperate to keep advertisers placing ads with them.