Beleaguered men’s magazines start to battle it out online

6 October 2007

Men’s magazines is truly a sector in crisis: in the first six months of 2007 nearly all UK titles aimed at the coveted 18 to 34-year-old market posted dramatic falls in circulation.

Although all traditional media – be they television, radio or print – have been hit by the popularity of online content, the men’s mag sector has felt the squeeze more than most. Over 44% of British men say their buying habits have changed as a result of online growth, compared to 36% of women. It’s easy to see why: the kind of product that FHM et al pioneered offered readers a previously unseen degree of control. Polls, competitions and the ability to submit amateur content – such as true stories and pictures – created an audience ripe for user-generated content. When Web 2.0 came of age, men’s magazine readers were ready for the next step.

Luckily for the industry, advertisers are still desperate to target this market. Men aged 18-34 often have impressive spending power twinned with an appetite for luxury and high-end goods, making them an attractive proposition. But they are famously elusive, known in the industry as “message averse”: they will spend money, but it is hard to influence them on how to do it.

Over 71% of males aged 18-34 say they now spend more time on the internet than they did a year ago. For men’s magazine brands, this offers the perfect opportunity to develop new products, an opportunity which most have seized. FHM.com now boasts an audience of over 1.7m unique users a month, a figure the print title could only dream of, even in its heyday.

The site began its transformation seven years ago when it started offering more video content, with clips of glamour models during photo shoots especially popular. Since then, FHM.com has launched a community section where users can create personal profiles, submit content and make online friends; more than 70,000 users have signed up.

Dennis Publishing’s internet products are also thriving. Monkey – the online magazine tipped for success in The Business last year – now boasts nearly 270,000 users, a figure which is growing by 20% a month. More importantly, the eZine – which is read online but looks and feels like a printed magazine – has offered advertisers innovative ways of targeting this problematic audience.

In the current issue, Carlsberg are advertising a “draughtmaster”, a product which it claims pours the “perfect pint”. Instead of buying static advertising space, Carlsberg has purchased a full page where readers can test a virtual version of the product; it’s the kind of fun, user-involved promotion the magazine’s readers will love.

Hearst, publisher of Esquire, has been slow to offer an online competitor in this area. Its recent acquisition of UGO.com – a network of sites aimed at the young men’s market – is its first real attempt to target young men on the web. UGO has had a chequered past. It launched in 1997 as Unified Gamers Online, to provide an internet destination for video gamers.