Wired’s financial woes

I thought that Wired’s finances must be looking up recently, what with the investment it has made in the new UK and Italian editions.  But all is not well on the advertising side of things according to the article “For Wired, a Revival Lacks Ads“.

It states:

…the magazine is an editorial success… [but it] has lost 50 percent of its ad pages so far this year

…it is still one of the least popular magazines at Condé Nast, with a circulation of only 704,000… meanwhile,  [it] is the most popular of Condé Nast’s magazine sites, with about 11 million unique visitors a month

The Web site is free, but it has not convinced most visitors to subscribe to the magazine… [it] is not big enough to be a can’t-miss advertising buy for national marketers, nor niche enough to have a narrowly defined audience

…the March issue, with just 38 advertising pages, was the bottom

The latest UK issue has 35 pages of ads out of a total of 154 pages.  Trouble is that seven pages of that are ads for other Condé Nast mags – GQ, Vanity Fair, Vogue. – or self promotion (subscriptions offer, what’s coming next month, readers’ panel.)  

It would be a shame to see the UK version fold due to purely financial concerns as they are really starting to get into the swing of things and rivalling the US version.  Some good country specific articles and simultaneous publishing of an article with the US version.  I hope Condé Nast has the patience, and deep enough pockets, to hold on for the long term.