As magazine competition grows and niches narrow, publishers are forced to find new ways of getting their product to potential readers. Those in charge of industry leading video game magazine Game Informer seem to have found an answer. The publication boast a near-2 million paid circulation and is the only gaming magazine to be in the MPA's top 100.
The impressive figures are mostly due with the publication's partnersip with video game retail chain GameStop, in which for $12.99 buyers recieve a year's subscription to Game Informer and a 10% discount card similar to a safeway card. The business plan was implemented officially a year and half ago, the results have been rich. With a 20% increase in circulation from 2006 to 2007 according to Media Week, the magazine saw a $500,000 bump in their rate base bringing it to $2.3 million.
With new consoles with astonishing technology being unvieled over the past two years, traffic in GameStop, and other gaming retail stores, has risen. Equating to the target audience being directly served in a inexpensive, inexhausted and convient way. That added with the 10% discount card and the relationship is benevolent.
To its credit, Game Informer is ranked by Media Week as the fourth leading magazine to reach the highly coveted 18-34 male demographic. But suffice to say, a relationship of this nature lends itself to puffing up numbers. Aside from subscriptions, each GameStop in America is stocked with the latest issue of the magazine; meaning GameStop could be taking the brunt of the cost in buying and reselling. Whether that is the case, Game Informer stands as an advertising magnet.
Though the question remains as to whether this will become a large trend in how magazine find their readers? Current practices of chains like Best Buy using their cashiers to hock magazine subscriptions are less effective. Though, finding similar parternships with other magazines in other industries is no easy task. A year of Vogue for a 10% all Macy's outerwear?
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