Publishing is Drowning in Ads!

Ads, ads, ads and more ads! We get bombarded with them everywhere! Not only in digital publishing, but in print, too. They are all over the place on the internet (hell, even on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary when you look up a word!) AND even on the covers of print magazines in the form of corner page-peels, belly bands, ad “windows” of varying sizes and false, glued-on covers and gatefolds#@*%?!

Now, I can understand a reasonable amount of ads to make up lost revenue due to faltering subscriptions, etc...BUT, damn, have a little consideration for the consumer.

My advice to advertisers: Don't overplay your hand! Consumers are overwhelmed with legit data as it is, but the more ads they have to wade through just dilutes not only their effectiveness but the legit site content they are placed on gets a bad rap as well.

A good example of this conundrum is illustrated in this article by Jason Fell in FOLIO magazine:

Does This Cover Push the Ad/Edit Line Too Far?


I’ve seen my share of advertisements on magazine covers over the last couple years. I’ve seen corner page-peels, belly bands and ad “windows” of varying sizes. I’ve also seen false, glued-on covers and gatefolds.

Something like this, however, I haven’t seen.

The cover of the October 7 issue of Canon Communications’ EDN magazine [pictured top, left] features the EDN nameplate as it usually would, but the remaining two-thirds—which normally is devoted to editorial—is all advertising. The space is shared by an ad from a company called Avago Technologies and a corner page-peel ad from Digi-Key Corp (which also has a full-page ad inside the magazine).

Read and enjoy more

Magazines No Longer the ‘Center of the Universe’

Print advertising profits are declining due to all the new upstarts in digital media. Publishers are having to re-think their place in the media food chain and design new business models to move forward and survive.

More on this topic by Jason Fell in November issue of Folio magazine:

Publisher Survival, especially for those supported mainly by print advertising, was the topic of debate, and some contention, during a Folio: Show Virtual panel discussion last month called “Big Ideas and New Opportunities for 2010 and Beyond.”

“The magazine business, particularly if you’re dominated by print advertising, is going to continue to be no-growth to a declining business—probably forever,” said panelist David Nussbaum, CEO of enthusiast magazine and book publisher F+W Media. Other panelists included Mann Media CEO Bernie Mann; Eric Biener, Nielsen Business Media’s vice president of business development; and Daniel McCarthy, chairman and CEO of Network Communications, Inc.

While some print magazines will survive, publishers “can’t bank on them being the driver” of their business, Nussbaum argued. At F+W, magazine publishing depends largely on subscription and newsstand revenues. “Advertising, which we love and we want, will be gravy on top of that,” he said.

Mann, who publishes North Carolina’s Our State, countered that losses in print don’t pertain to the entire industry. “Trust is very important and is hard to find. How many people trust television today? How many people trust their daily newspapers,” he said. “If you can build trust in magazines, you have some long, long legs.”

Growing Competition

With bloggers and other online publishers are continuing to pop up and take market share, traditional magazine publishers in the future won’t hold sole ownership of the markets they serve, the panelists largely agreed. Publishers now should focus more on core products, the panelists said, and on being “active participants” in the markets they serve.

“I don’t think we’re ever going back to the day when we were the center of the universe. We have to recognize that,” Nussbaum said. “We now are part of the overall community. If we can grasp that role then we can begin to get back to levels of profitability.”

The Paid Content Debate

And, of course, what’s a panel discussion today without talk about charging for content online? “Allowing people to parse out the pieces of content they find valuable, and to make nickels on those pieces on an economy of scale is one of the future models we are looking at for our businesses,” Biener said. “I think micropayments are going to play successfully in the future of media business, specifically content.”