ABC: Men's Health top for digital edition circulation

Men's Health magazine recorded the highest average circulation for its digital editions in the second half of last year, according to results published by the Audit Bureau of Circulation today.

According to ABC, digital editions refer to "a digital version of a print publication", as opposed to digital publications, which are considered "stand-alone publications" with "no consideration of editorial or advertising similarity" and as a result can feature "dynamically served ads".

A number of magazines with interactive digital publications, for example, are now reporting circulation results for those publications using the digital publications certificate, while their print replica editions are reported as digital editions.

Currently ABC offers an analysis of the digital edition results, which places Men's Health top with an average digital circulation per issue of 12,676.

This represents an increase on the first six months of 2012, when the magazine's digital edition recorded a circulation of 12,142. It also overtakes Cosmopolitan magazine, which is now fifth in the table for the second half of the year with a digital edition circulation of 10,841.

Conde Nast Publications title GQ came second with a circulation of 11,779, followed by The Economist's continental Europe edition with 11,624.

In fourth position was Future magazine T3 with a circulation of 11,158.

T3 is one of the magazines which has reported a digital edition circulation as well as digital publication circulation, enabling Future to outline circulations for both the digital page-turner edition of the magazine and its interactive digital publication.

Other magazines, including Future titles Total Film, MacFormat and Edge, have also reported circulation results specifically for their interactive digital editions via a digital publication certificate.

Head of international business at digital magazine platform lekiosk, which launched in the UK last year, Nathaniel Philippe, issued a statement saying that the figures published today "show that digital magazine sales are already starting to cushion the fall for a number of titles with declining print revenues".

But he added that "digital magazine publishing is still in its infancy".

"It's already clear that publishers cannot simply create some kind of digital presence and sit back and wait for the customers to roll up – they need to experiment with the way they charge for, and present, their content if they're going to 'crack' the vast and potentially lucrative global digital magazine market."

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