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Yep. And the ads were often good. I read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics growing up. The ads weren't just some bland spec sheet, they went into the techno

by Kye 2y ago

Yep. And the ads were often good. I read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics growing up. The ads weren't just some bland spec sheet, they went into the technology or engineering behind whatever it was advertising. The ads could be as good as the articles. Simpler ads would at least try to be clever.

ryukoposting 2y ago
I do recall a handful of the full-page PopSci "back of the mag" ads being articles in their own right, and sometimes they were as well-written as the actual articles written by PopSci. Although those were always the exception, rather than the norm, I feel like that kind of thing is just gone. That said, I wonder if it's caused by limits in the ad delivery methods we use today, rather than some industry wide lack of interest in making quality ads. I can't conceive of how such an ad would be delivered through Google, for example. Meta? Maybe.
ghaff 2y ago
There are a lot of people here who react viscerally to any advertising in any form. I'd point that Computer Shopper was a huge magazine with some pro-forma often low-rent writing that existed as basically a vehicle to deliver ads to people who couldn't really get that information any other way. PC Mag/Byte/etc. was higher quality editorial but still had a lot of advertising.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  Indeed. As I recall Computer Shopper's articles were the legally minimum percentage of the magazine to make it qualify as a periodical rather than a catalog (US postage rates between the two differed, with periodicals being cheaper). We subscribed for the ads, but some of the articles (like Don Lancaster teaching writing Postscript manually to create figures) were interesting.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    You take what you can as a freelancer and I'm sure I know a number of folks who wrote for a the magazine at some point or other and did a fine job. But you certainly didn't subscribe or buy issues for the articles.
musicale 2y ago
Magazine ads don't bother me, especially if they're on-topic (e.g. PC ads in a PC magazine.) I find ads in vintage PC magazines to be particularly interesting and fun. But web ads are typically obnoxious, intrusive, and off-topic. Delivery formats such as pop-up windows and auto-playing video are so disruptive that there are browser settings to block them – settings which web advertisers work tirelessly to subvert. The commercial web has become unusable without ad blockers.

by Kye 2y ago

ryukoposting 2y ago

I do recall a handful of the full-page PopSci "back of the mag" ads being articles in their own right, and sometimes they were as well-written as the actual articles written by PopSci. Although those were always the exception, rather than the norm, I feel like that kind of thing is just gone. That said, I wonder if it's caused by limits in the ad delivery methods we use today, rather than some industry wide lack of interest in making quality ads. I can't conceive of how such an ad would be delivered through Google, for example. Meta? Maybe.

ghaff 2y ago

There are a lot of people here who react viscerally to any advertising in any form. I'd point that Computer Shopper was a huge magazine with some pro-forma often low-rent writing that existed as basically a vehicle to deliver ads to people who couldn't really get that information any other way. PC Mag/Byte/etc. was higher quality editorial but still had a lot of advertising.

jhbadger 2y ago
Indeed. As I recall Computer Shopper's articles were the legally minimum percentage of the magazine to make it qualify as a periodical rather than a catalog (US postage rates between the two differed, with periodicals being cheaper). We subscribed for the ads, but some of the articles (like Don Lancaster teaching writing Postscript manually to create figures) were interesting.
- ghaff 2y ago
  You take what you can as a freelancer and I'm sure I know a number of folks who wrote for a the magazine at some point or other and did a fine job. But you certainly didn't subscribe or buy issues for the articles.

musicale 2y ago

Magazine ads don't bother me, especially if they're on-topic (e.g. PC ads in a PC magazine.) I find ads in vintage PC magazines to be particularly interesting and fun. But web ads are typically obnoxious, intrusive, and off-topic. Delivery formats such as pop-up windows and auto-playing video are so disruptive that there are browser settings to block them – settings which web advertisers work tirelessly to subvert. The commercial web has become unusable without ad blockers.