Top 5 October Monthlies
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Greer Jonas

The monthlies' October 2011 ad-page performance showed more trick than treat in the September 19 min. Ad-page totals for the 154 tracked magazines had a weak 55-up/99-down ratio versus Oct. 2010.  The cumulative differential resulted in a solemn -8.03% and year-to-date (January - October) was -1.47%.

People en Español took the top slot in our October monthly boxscores with their 15th anniversary issue of 129.42 ad pages and a 73.14% hike from last year's 74.75 pages.

Playboy (+70.47%) made its premiere in our top 5 thanks to publisher (since Nov. 2009) John Lumpkin's 60-cent newsstand cover price of yesteryear promotion that was tied to the Sept. 19 premiere of The Playboy Club. Naturally, the advertisers followed.

And at Smithsonian (+42.40%), group publisher Jennifer Hicks tells min:

"Increases were purely driven by companies realizing the power and breadth of our brand. New business this year and to the October issue came from such automotive companies as Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Toyota Venza; oil-industry corporate messages were from Shell and Chevron; and financial, from Credit Suisse. Other new business came from The Susan G. Komen Foundation (a Museum Day advertiser) and pharmaceutical companies Novartis, GSK, Eli Lilly and Pfizer. There were 11 new advertisers in the issue."

Here are the top 5 for October, sorted by highest percentage gains.
See the full October boxscore chart and analysis.