Audience Characteristics and Bundling: A Hedonic Analysis of Magazine Advertising Rates

Abstract

Increasingly, magazines are able to offer potential advertisers all their readers (pure bundling), only specific reader segments (pure components pricing), or a combination of the two (mixed bundling). Using data on advertising rates and reader demographics, the authors estimate the implicit prices of reader characteristics within a hedonic framework. The results suggest that the magnitude of the price and revenue premiums earned by “unbundling” a magazine's readers can be substantial.