Homepage

Enders Analysis provides a subscription research service covering the media, entertainment, mobile and fixed telecommunications industries in Europe, with a special focus on new technologies and media.

Our research is independent and evidence-based, covering all sides of the market: consumers, leading companies, industry trends, forecasts and public policy & regulation. A complete list of our research can be found here.

 

Rigorous Fearless Independent

The Times

9 October 2017

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Glamour magazine, which announced yesterday that it would relaunch as a “digital first” beauty brand, with its final monthly magazine coming out next month. Although the Condé Nast title will publish a “collectible” edition every six months, the new direction reflects alarm within the publishing industry about the long-term future of beauty and celebrity magazines. Douglas said “circulation has been declining very rapidly across magazines generally but the women’s sector in particular, really since the smartphone became mass market.”

Financial Times

9 October 2017

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the magazine world, where even the most prestigious titles have been challenged by the never-ending penetration of the internet and its abundance of free news and entertainment. With circulation and advertising revenues under pressure on both sides of the Atlantic magazines are facing an increasingly uncertain future. In fact, Magna Global, a media buying agency, expects magazines’ global advertising revenues to fall 13 per cent this year, while Enders Analysis, a media research group, has warned that the consumer magazine market was reaching “an existential threshold”. Douglas said “the industry is shrinking, and the decline seems to be accelerating both in circulation and in advertising — for print and online”. In the longer term, magazine publishers still have to work out what to do about the internet. He added “the way print advertising always worked was advertisers would pay for a magazine’s audience but also for the environment and the context”, but online magazines “have nothing like the same context and resonance” because a reader might stumble across an article on Facebook or Twitter and then immediately go somewhere else. Publishers, he says, have been “chasing a myth about digital advertising. In print they might have 100,000 readers while online they can get 10m. But that’s irrelevant because the 100,000 are the right 100,000 and more valuable”. Online advertising rates continue to lag print rates at their peak so in chasing large online readerships, magazines have “diluted the very essence of their brand . . . they have lost sight of what audience targeting really means”.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Privacy Order (FCC) was overturned by the Senate, clearing the way for ISPs to ramp up consumer data-driven advertising revenue.

While Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising in the US as in other markets, the US is alone in removing regulatory barriers to ISPs taking a piece of the pie.

US ISPs now have a self-regulatory regime for consumer rights on transparency, security and data breaches; but in the UK and EU, privacy advocates prefer enforceable rights.

In a challenging digital marketplace, publishers face a crisis of purpose. To navigate the turbulent seas, publishers must invest more in their brands and the industry as a whole must innovate

Consumer engagement, previously held by magazines, has sailed to social media where young influencers across Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat challenge established norms of content discovery and curation

Magazines are more heterogeneous than is commonly assumed, and strength lies in a distinctive brand. To right the course, we recommend the industry carry out bespoke reviews that outline brand-specific audiences, use-cases and revenue solutions, and exploit systematic audience data to optimise all brand manifestations - with enhanced marketing income a secondary benefit

Evidence is mounting that the consumer magazine market is reaching an existential threshold. In this two-part overview of the UK consumer magazine marketplace we address the need for industry collaboration and brand innovation.

The print market is seeing sector-wide declines and the real structural fallout has only just begun; a supply chain review is urgently required.

Magazine brands lack a unique selling point in online advertising, and although long-disastrous ad tech trends may be finally turning in favour of premium publishers, developing must-have consumer services remains the key.

European mobile service revenue growth witnessed a rare growth spike this quarter, rising to 0.5%, likely due in large part to the reduced impact this quarter from the European roaming cut regulation, but also helped by a slight softening of MTR cuts and continued ‘more-for-more’ price increases

This roaming regulation holiday will end next quarter and the full impact of ‘free roaming’ will be felt, thus the spike in mobile service revenue growth is likely to more-than-reverse

What is likely to prove lasting is the zero-rated data offers introduced in several markets in Q2, which we expect to see more of given their reported success at improving ARPUs

Mobile service revenue growth continued to improve on a reported basis, but most of this improvement came from a significant dip in the MTR cut drag. EE remained the leader in terms of service revenue growth, with both the strongest ARPU growth and robust contract net adds

The quarter also benefited from the current round of in-contract price increases, which were more widespread and at a higher level than last year, and from a brief holiday in the impact of roaming cut regulation, the impact of which will strongly reverse in Q3 as ‘free roaming’ impacts the whole quarter at the same time as mobile users take their actual holidays

Recent spectrum announcements have far from clarified the auction outlook, with Ofcom deciding on a more restrictive spectrum cap than its initial views but both H3G and EE appealing its decision. It will likely be some time before all 5G spectrum auction rules are resolved, let alone actually holding the auctions or building the networks

Financial Times

25 September 2017

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Time Inc, who wants to sell its UK magazines division, including well-known titles such as Country Life, TV Times and the NME, as part of a wider shake-up of the struggling US publishing group. The move is part of what the company called a “strategic transformation programme” and comes after Time abandoned plans to sell itself in April, ending months of speculation over the future of the group which owns Time, People and Sports Illustrated. On Friday Time reported a 17 per cent fall in second quarter print and other advertising revenues, and confirmed a $400m cost-savings programme. Time, formerly known as IPC, is one of the UK’s biggest magazine publishers. According to data from Enders Analysis the company’s titles attracted the highest annual circulation in the UK in 2016 with 168.7m. Douglas said that while the move by Time was not a shock, it was still a “big decision” for the US group. Adding that “the UK is a very important territory, probably the biggest outside the US. But print ads are tough, digital advertising hasn’t taken off and its market share is being threatened by bloggers and other social media online”.

Through innovations in processing, connectivity and cameras, Apple’s new device lineup dispels fears that the importance of integrated, profitable mobile hardware is in terminal decline

With the broadest range of iPhone price points ever, Apple is confidently balancing between profits and growing the valuable installed base

Apple’s long way to an AR future is now well paved, but a weakness in mapping could prove to be an Achilles heel