Don't Mistake it for a Print Revival

The New York Times ran a piece, yesterday about burgeoning number of ad pages in some of America's top monthly magazines.  This September, Vogue (with Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover), clocked in with a whopping...690 pages of advertising.  Vogue is owned by the privately held Conde Naste.  For investors, however, the article mentions the publicly held Meredith Corp. (NYSE: MDP):

At the  Meredith Corporation, which publishes more than a dozen magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies' Home Journal, "September was better than August, and October will be better than September," said Jack Griffin, president of the publishing group.

Among the ad categories contributing to the improvements, he added, are toiletries and cosmetics, prescription drugs, fashion and financial services.

Those advertisers were also credited with helping results at Parenting magazine, published by Time Inc., which will run the most ad pages for any September issue in its 18 years, said Jeff Wellington, vice president and group publisher, and Good Housekeeping, the venerable Hearst women's service magazine, where ad pages increased 29.8 percent from last September.

But what's driving these ad sales, when everyone is talking about the internet taking the wind out of print's sales?  I think it has less to do with any inherent strength of these magazines, than what I'd hesitantly call a "Celebrity Bubble" helping to fuel interest in lifestyle and entertainment magazines.  After all, many magazines have fallen on hard times, like Newsweek which had to drop an issue due to low ad sales.

Meanwhile, celebrity and lifestyle magazines proliferate at a dizzying pace with new ones coming out each month.  Many of them are redundant, like the celebrities/designers/interiors they cover.  Even on the internet, blogs like The Superficial get far more hits per day (In the hundreds of thousands) than a blog like The Stalwart. 

So when Vogue runs 690 pages of ads, in a monthly weighing nearly 4 pounds, something's gotta give.  I don't expect that good times to go on forver.