America's Biggest Magazine Brands

Despite the fact that it has become harder for publishers to sell actual magazines at the newsstand since smartphones have become ubiquitous reading devices for many people in the United States, leading magazine brands remain highly relevant in today’s fractured media landscape.

According to the Association of Magazine Media (MPA), the entire industry’s aggregate monthly audience grew by 1.4 percent to 1.8 billion people last year, with just 51 percent of that total audience reached by way of the traditional magazine format (incl. digital editions).

As the following chart, ranking the Top 10 U.S. magazine brands by total audience, shows, most leading magazine brands have long become true multimedia properties whose content is consumed in many ways, including but in no way limited to actual magazine reading. While some brands, e.g. Better Homes and Gardens and National Geographic, still reach the majority of their readers via magazine, others such as Forbes and ESPN reach much more people online than they do with their namesake magazines.