The latest marketing tools in the magazine world are promotional supplements based on partnerships. In the May issue of Image magazine, for instance, the 32-page Image Brown Thomas Guide to the Season is attached.

The newsagent's magazine rack is traditionally a fiercely competitive marketplace and, with the number of new titles growing every year, Irish women's magazines have to shout for shelf space and sales.

Good content will keep readers happy, but the challenge is to sell the product in the first place. Increasingly, publishers have to innovate and add value - whether through supplements or the Internet - to stay in the running.

Magazine readership and circulation is measured by a range of survey methods and groups, but the JNRR figures for 1998, published by Lansdowne Market Research, showed serious declines in readership figures for the Irish monthlies.

The publishers of IT, U, Woman's Way and Image queried the accuracy of that decline, which they said was not reflected in other surveys. The figures for 1999 were much improved, with increases of up to 33 per cent in readership.

The research contract will be renewed in June and the JNRR committee is reviewing methods for press research in general, with a view to increasing sample numbers to provide a more robust base for the results.

The largest Irish publisher in the sector is Smurfit Publications, which produces IT, U and Woman's Way. Mr Ciaran Havelin, sales and marketing director with the company, says the single biggest selling factor for Irish titles is their relevance to the market at which they are aimed. "Over the last seven or eight years, the increase in the number of UK magazines filtering in has eaten into the market share, but Irish magazines sales still far exceed those of British magazines," he says.

Local magazines have an access advantage, especially with the fashion and beauty content. When clothes or other products are featured, readers can buy them in local shops. But magazine publishers have to employ both traditional and innovative methods of marketing to keep their products in the consumer's eye. They also have merchandisers looking after the placement of magazines in each store. The latest marketing tool is the provision of promotional supplements based on partnerships. In the May issue of Image, for instance, the 32-page Image Brown Thomas Guide to the Season is attached. These partnerships are a way of adding value and tapping into a new audience, according to Ms Jane McDonnell, managing director of Image.

The magazine is 25 years old and was the first to go online. "We're strengthening our online presence and looking at e-commerce development down the line," Ms McDonnell says. Smurfit Communications is in the final stages of setting up a one-stop website for young Irish women, to be called iVenus.com. According to Mr Havelin, the site will cover everything from lipstick to personal savings plans.

If advertising revenues are to be used as a yardstick for success, business is going very well at Image. Revenues have increased year-on-year for the past decade, but 1999 saw the biggest jump, with a 24 per cent increase in advertising revenues from 1998.