Truth in Advertising: Magazine Statistics, MagNet, MIN and MPA 360

As the most recent MagNet reports came in, I started to ponder other recent changes in reporting on the magazine media industry. You will remember that the Media Industry Newsletter (MIN), which had until recently been chronicling the magazine industry’s ad page performance for almost 70 years, was asked to stop tracking and distributing “sold” ad page data to media professionals with its legendary Boxscores. MIN editor-in-chief Steve Cohn reported that publishers were being discouraged from turning over their numbers as the MPA, the Association of Magazine Media, was getting ready to unveil a new way of calibrating the industry’s performance called Magazine Media 360⁰.