Winter 2012 List Pricing Sees Category-Wide Shifts

Consumer magazine pricing edges up while b-to-b drops slightly.

By Bill Mickey
Wednesday, February 8, 2012

List marketing agency Worldata released its winter 2012 pricing metrics and all of the 20 categories the company tracks changed in average value.

Among the trends are permission-based b-to-c emails that, after a protracted tumble, have landed at the lowest price at $80/M—a $14/M decrease from the same period 2011.

The small to medium-sized business list market has become a major focus for marketers and the competition has driven prices down. Permission-based small business files dropped about 12 percent while medium to large business files dropped 10 percent from same period 2011. "We are seeing a huge push toward the small-medium business market right now and you can see the competition in list availability reflected by the drop in pricing this winter," says Worldata senior vice president Ray Tesi. "Many technology, financial services and business marketers are seeking to reach the up-and-coming entrepreneurs who built their own companies out of the recent recession."

While permission-based b-to-c email pricing has settled in at the lowest price, the database/masterfile category had the most precipitous drop, falling about 23 percent to $109/M.

Not far behind that category is the business slice of the aggregated email database category, which fell 22 percent landing at $159/M.

The consumer magazine list category bumped up $1/M, or about 1 percent, to $93/M compared to same period last year. B-to-b magazines dropped slightly in pricing, edging down by $1/M for paid circ and $2/M for controlled.