MacWorld magazine slipped six spots in Advertising Age magazineis list of the top 300 U.S. periodicals for 2003 after a 17% dive in copy sales from 2002.

MacWorld fell to 180th position from 174th. Rankings are based on the total advertising and circulation gross revenues in 2003. Results were reported in the September 20th edition of AdAge.

Average paid copy sales, reported for July through December of 2003, dropped to 256,932 from 366,849 in the same period of 2002 - a 17.6% drop - according to numbers obtained from BPA Worldwide, which audits the magazineis circulation. Total gross revenue for MacWorld fell over US$4.2 million in 2003 to $42.0 million, according to AdAge.

Other personal computer magazines in the 2003 list included PC Magazine in 38th spot with $202 million in total gross revenue and a total paid circulation of 916,710. The magazine slipped nine spots from 29th in 2002. PC World magazine rose to 70th from 74th the year before with total gross revenue of $130 million with a total paid circulation of 1.1 million. eWeek was ranked 102nd, down from 98th, and Computer Shopper was at 164th, down from 128th in 2002.

Advertising Age is a marketing and advertising trade journal that monitors developments in the industry. The Top 300 magazine list comes out every September after complete results of revenues and circulation are released by a variety of auditing groups.

The last auditing statement of circulation from MacWorld was for the last six months of 2003. The next circulation statement will be for the first half of 2004 and will be released in the next few weeks.

MacAddict magazine was not among the AdAge Top 300.

MacWorld magazine is a part of Mac Publishing LLC, which is a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG).