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From their 1997 high, coinciding with the Spice Girls phenomenon and its associated 'girl power' trend, teen magazines have lost more than a third of their sales - down from 3.2m in 1997 to 2.1m by the end of 2003, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). J17 and 19's sales accounted for more than 200,000 of the total. Unless those readers transfer their affections to other titles, the next set of ABCs in August will reveal an even more drastic decline.

Teenagers' rapidly advancing maturity and sophistication is a big problem for publishers. Drooling over posters of boy bands, elementary make-up tips and advice on boys are increasingly only relevant to pre-pubescents. Much of today's sassy youth would not be seen dead reading a magazine that overtly targets teens.

So brands with teenages in the title - J17 and 19 - are a turn-off, as are titles that conjure up sweetie-pie images - Sugar, Mizz and Bliss.

Instead, teenage girls are trading up to young women's magazines, such as Glamour and Company, or following the celebrity obsession trend, by reading Heat and Sneak.

Consequently, reaching enough teens through the traditional magazines is now almost impossible, according to Sinead Sheahan, media director for Universal McCann on L'Oreal Golden, the third-biggest advertiser in the teen mag sector, spending just under £500,000 in the past year. For beauty advertisers, teen magazines are still important, she says: 'Nothing else can match their glossy environment and endorsement value.' But she adds that only a quarter of the budget is spent on magazines; youth TV channels take L'Oreal Golden's biggest share. Its other focuses include online, radio and posters in changing rooms of shops such as Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins.

For Coty, the fifth-biggest spender in teen magazines, the gravitation of teens toward women's magazines is not such an issue, according to marketing manager Sophie Lorge. Its youth cosmetics brand, Rimmel, carries over into the women's market with the same advertising copy. Nevertheless, with the average age of teen mag readers decreasing, Rimmel now makes more use of sponsorship opportunities, such as the Sugar Model Competition, rather than display ads, so it can meet with, and talk directly to, younger readers at events.

Reaching a wider age demographic might appeal to some brands, but magazines now face competition for teen advertisers' budgets from TV channels such as MTV, The Hits and Trouble TV, warns Geoff de Burca, connections director at Vizeum. 'TV is now more cost-effective and has become a viable medium, even for small advertisers,' he says. 'You can reach teens in an environment that is not explicitly teen, so doesn't have the uncool connotations associated with teen mags.'

The internet is another environment that many youth brands find to be better suited to communicating with teens. Most of Adidas' budget is spent on outdoor, targeting teenagers in urban centres. But it spends 10% interacting directly through teen-oriented sites such as Mykindaplace.com and Girland.com.

A recent 'Adidas Colours' campaign enabled website users to create a virtual version of themselves and then try on clothes. Teens love the interactivity, says PHD media group manager Duncan Owen. 'The web allows you to engage with them in a way that you can't do with magazines.'

When it comes to new media, it is not the internet that has had the most damaging effect on teen magazines, but the explosion in SMS use. This is consuming both time and money that would previously have been spent on magazines. Over the past four years, the number of text messages sent each month has increased from 300,000 to 2.1m, according to the Mobile Data Association and mobile phone companies believe the vast majority are sent by teens. Mobile phone ownership among 11- to 16-year-olds has soared to more than 80%. Most of these phones are pre-pay, and top-up cards are more often than not purchased out of teenagers' pocket money and part-time job earnings, according to BMRB/Mintel.

It is a bitter irony that, although their readers are prime targets for mobile phone companies, teen magazines aren't benefiting from their huge marketing budgets. The Stewart Report into the health considerations of mobiles issued a guideline to mobile phone operators not to overtly target children under 16.

Sophisticated entrants

It's not all doom and gloom. The launches in autumn 2001 of Cosmo Girl! and Elle Girl have breathed some life into the market. Their slightly older formats mark them out from the pack. Elle Girl, which launched as a quarterly, only increased its frequency to monthly in February and is easily the most sophisticated, targeting young fashionistas and their growing shopping budgets. It has yet to register an ABC figure, but is believed to be selling about 100,000.

Cosmo Girl! plays on similar, if less racy themes, as its parent title Cosmopolitan. It saw its sales buck the downward trend in the last ABCs, for July-December 2003, with a 40% increase on the previous year to 198,324, and it claims to have a median age of 15. Although the content is not that different from the likes of Sugar, both are doubtless benefiting from having a women's brand in their masthead. Meanwhile, rumours abound of the imminent launch of a UK edition of US title Teen Vogue.

It remains to be seen whether the trial of the celebrity-focused Teen Now, initially launched as a one-off in April, can stem the migration of teens into Heat, and provide a shot in the arm for the sector. Such a boost would be welcomed by advertisers for whom teen mags remain the best, and perhaps only, medium for promoting their products to teens.

The biggest advertiser in teen mags is P&G, owner of the Tampax and Always brands, spending almost £1m in the past year. Sanpro advertisers admit that it is difficult to communicate their intimate message to young girls in any other medium. Girls get embarrassed by advertisers talking to them about their periods in media such as TV and outdoor, where they are likely to view the ad in the company of others, says Lindsay Weedon, media director at PHD on the Accantia account, which includes Lil-lets and Simple. 'There is nothing like the comforting environment of magazines,' she says.

There is no doubt that teen publishers, and some advertisers, are learning some harsh lessons in the prevailing social climate. Some industry analysts believe there are many more who need to update their understanding of the teen market.

Too many advertisers identify young people with drug culture and hedonism, when in fact they are the most level-headed, ambitious and worldly of any previous generation, according to Sean Pillot de Chenecey, a youth trends analyst. He explains that brand owners have become confused by the earlier maturity of pre-teens.

'At first they couldn't believe their luck, but they failed to appreciate that teens would run a mile from brands that had been hijacked by their younger siblings,' he says. 'They need to decide where they want to position their brand image, and who it is they are going after.'

CASE STUDY - OXY

In 2004 GlaxoSmithKline skincare brand Oxy transferred the bulk of its £500,000 broadcast budget out of TV into cinema, and most of its £200,000 non-broadcast spend out of mags into online and SMS. Research led brand manager Karmel Maletta to two conclusions. First, targeting teens through TV, where viewing - particularly of music channels - is often a background noise, was ineffective. Second, teens were spending less time reading magazines and watching TV, but were spending up to 35 hours a week surfing the internet.

Much of its online budget is spent with Mykindaplace.com. Activity includes product promotions and sponsorship of the site's Showbiz channel, with links to the oxy.co.uk website, which was created for Oxy by Mykindaplace.

Crucially, the tie-up also allows Oxy to send emails to Mykindaplace's 285,000-strong database with news of store offers and product sampling.

Response rates to online promotions demonstrate that the web now gives better coverage than magazines, says Maletta: 'An online promotion of a Superdrug offer received 750,000 hits, which is nearly three times the circulation of Sugar, the biggest-selling teen title.'

TOP TEEN MAG ADVERTISERS

Advertiser Expenditure

(pounds)

Procter & Gamble 985,731

Inspired Technology (PopText) 661,088

L'Oreal Golden 460,498

Emode (Pling Playtones) 420,532

Coty Cosmetics 366,935

Nestle 359,074

Telezone 330,752

Woolworths 302,708

Skechers 302,455

Sonera Zed 299,808

Crookes Healthcare (Clearasil) 299,260

Fanz.com 234,487

Virgin Records 227,588

iTouch (Text 8181) 221,761

Kellogg 199,530

Johnson & Johnson 193,257

COI Communications 192,163

Electronic Arts 173,441

Rolling Tones 169,106

Ringtoneking 151,684

Total 6,551,858

Source: Nielsen Media Research, April 2003-March 2004