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"The average British woman spends about £279 on beauty and cosmetics but she spends about a third more, £394 on technology products. By comparison the magazines

"The average British woman spends about £279 on beauty and cosmetics but she spends about a third more, £394 on technology products. By comparison the magazines she reads gives about 20 times as many column-inches to cosmetics than they do for tech. The disconnect between how the glossy mags choose to fill their pages and how British women actually spend their money suggests that traditional publishers are out of touch with their readership. Women spend more on smartphones than men, they spend one and a half times as much on technology and influence 57% of new technology purchases. The glossy mags have yet to acknowledge that women are now fully involved as technology consumers." The most damning evidence It makes me think that these magazines are not actually designed to optimally interest their readers, but simply to grab their attention and then mold it to their advertisers interests.

circuiter 13y ago
Yes, but if women want to read about technology they can buy a technology magazine. How much of Men's magazines column inches are given to tech?
- tomchristie 13y ago
  > How much of Men's magazines column inches are given to tech? As a rule, shit loads.
- eonil 13y ago
  Currently, tech magazines for men is nothing fun to women. In majority, women want artistic fun rather then numerical fun. Again, in majority, women has no interest on benchmark number stuffs, and more interested in which app look more beautiful. Such as "Best sexy looking app top 10" rather than "World fastest super-computer top 10". In other words, their behavior has not been changed. Only the medium has been changed. It was fashion and beauty stuffs before, and now it just expanded to electronics.
  - homeomorphic 13y ago
    1950 called. They want their worldview back.
    - omonra 13y ago
      Judging from the OP, he's right and you're living in lala-land. Ie - it could be a case of major conspiracy on the part of publishers (who are all women btw) to keep their readers away from tech. Or they could simply be giving their readers what they want.
      - im3w1l 13y ago
        Or there could be an unfilled niche.
        PeterisP 13y ago
        If (masses of) women really had a need like that, they'd buy the current tech magazines - it wouldn't fit the niche perfectly, but it would at least partly fulfill that need. They don't. Which is evidence that there is no such unfilled niche.
        halostatue 13y ago
        Or, much more likely, they aren't interested in the male focus of said tech magazines. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738657 for a quick look at the covers of the tech magazine T3. Are you saying the average woman would really want to read a tech magazine with that sort of focus? We're not talking CACM here; we're talking tech magazines that, for the longest time, celebrated conference booth babes.
        PeterisP 13y ago
        If what you say is true, then all the world's women with the desire for reading tech would flock to the few tech magazines that have less of "that sort of focus", they exist. This would cause these "non-booth-babed" magazines to have a disproportionally large amount of women buyers, which they would see immediately... but it's not happening. Reality is that which doesn't go away if you disbelieve or dislike it.
- ColinWright 13y ago
  My wife reports to me that if she wants to buy a copy of Android Magazine she has to shoulder aside men who are much larger than she, and fish among the magazines about fishing, cars, "Lad's Mags" (ugh (her words)), and similar things. "Not fun" (direct quotation).
  - girvo 13y ago
    Exactly. Hell, I (as a upper middle class young male) get annoyed when trying to find a tech magazine on the shelves. Hidden amongst a dozen other things, and usually a terrible selection. Sigh... Not that it matters, my favourite magazine (Atomic MPC) that I subbed to for 5 years folded into PC Authority :(
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    Ok, so that's a message to retailers that they might get more sales by rearranging magazines on their shelves - how do we get this message to them?
- tommorris 13y ago
  Have a look at the front covers of T3 magazine some time... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=t3+magazine&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=t3+magazine&tbm=isch There's a theme there.
  - revelation 13y ago
    That's a tech magazine, even if the cover doesn't imply that...
    - tommorris 13y ago
      I know it's a tech magazine. I'm just somewhat flummoxed what the attractive busty woman on the front of every magazine has to do with iPhones or whatever.
      - delian66 13y ago
        The theory is that seeing them close together, will cause an association in the (assumed male) reader's mind, between the qualities of the attractive sexy model and the product, so that when the reader sees the product in the future, he will be attracted to it on a subconscious level, and thus more likely to buy it ... or in other words, "sex sells".
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  A reasonably large amount, ranging from cool toys to the latest apps and random websites they've come across. Add on a lot of technology magazines may as well be men's magazines due to the content focus, tonality and usage of scantily clad women caressing the latest tech products.
- halostatue 13y ago
  Or I could buy Playboy. The tech and music coverage in there is very good. Despite being a “men's” magazine in the most direct sense, the breadth of coverage (music, movies—both new releases and home video, video games, automotive tech, men's fashion, and technology in general, plus the politics, interviews, reporting, and fiction) is generally good. GQ also has fairly good broad-based coverage. A couple of other magazines that aren't strictly men’s magazines but have a male editorial slant do much the same (VF and Rolling Stone). Men's magazines tend to cover far broader interests than women's magazines. Tech magazines, on the other hand, almost exclusively cater to a young male audience.
cstross 13y ago
It makes me think that these magazines are not actually designed to optimally interest their readers, but simply to grab their attention and then mold it to their advertisers interests. The whole point of the editorial content in trade publishing is to sell advertising pages. Back when I was a columnist for Computer Shopper (in the UK, circa 1999-2005, during the golden autumn of the computer magazine publishing era -- before direct PC sales over the internet gutted it) the ABC audited circulation of the mag was around 135,000 readers (multiply by 5 for an equivalent US readership). Cover price was on the order of £2.35, so you could expect revenue of £317,000-odd per issue from paid subscribers/store customers. Around 120 pages consisted of editorial content, plus up to 550 pages of advertising. (This ratio holds in the US, too, where to take advantage of printed matter bulk postal rates magazines had to have no less than 20% editorial content mixed in with the ads.) I don't have exact revenue figures, but a half-page black and white ad in CS sold at the time for roughly £2000. So, ignoring the premium for colour and blow-in ads, we can approximate the advertising revenue to £2.2M per issue. In actual fact, colour ads sold for a lot more, so the revenue per issue would be closer to £3M. The take-home here is that at most 14% of the magazine's revenue came direct from the readers -- indeed, the readers were probably getting the colourful 650-page object for the cost of printing alone. The remaining 86% -- or more -- of the magazine's revenue came from advertising. Now, from a business perspective, whose interests do you expect to weigh more heavily on the mind of the publisher -- the readers, or the advertisers?
- rwmj 13y ago
  I was going to say: Since technology sales are higher, why aren't technology companies advertising more? But the markup on cosmetics (scented water with fancy labels) is huge, so the cosmetics companies have much more money to spread around in advertising.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    People would likely forget about cosmetics to some degree if they weren't advertised so much, they are pure luxury. Technology provides functionality (beyond luxury) used in everyday life, so it doesn't have to advertise as much. Cosmetics have to advertise to just stay alive.
hrktb 13y ago
Is money spent relevant though ? I spend more on car insurance, gas and other maintenance fees than on entertainment, and really don't care about cars as long as mine doesn't break. A lot of women might have as little interest in the next Samsung phone.
- workbench 13y ago
  Money spend is almost irrelevant and comparing it to cosmetics is mostly pointless. Especially when that annual number doesn't even cover the cost of a single major tech purchase. Time invested in researching purchase and how much they cared about purchasing decisions in each area would be far more relevant. Also why do women have to be treated like mindless drones that have to be protected from evil magazines? Critics really need to start giving them more credit. "The endless pages of thin flawless models make young women frown critically at themselves in the mirror" Mens magazines are full of muscled up sports stars, if I read them I'm pretty certain it wouldn't make me get all upset when I look in the mirror. People are not stupid
pgsandstrom 13y ago
The amount of money you spend on something does not equal your interest in it.
berrypicker 13y ago
Those stats are pretty much useless. Technology is more expensive. Hey, women spend more on cars than cosmetics, should they include car columns too? Buying a laptop, an iPhone and a tablet or something will cost way more than a year's worth of make up, doesn't say anything about a person's real interests. Also, the average British woman is not the average Women's magazine reader. It's more likely that readers of women's magazines 1. don't spend as much on technology, or 2. if they do, it's simply the case of buying an expensive smartphone or whatever to listen to music or browse Facebook.
Shivetya 13y ago
It makes me think technology items are just too damn expensive. Phones and the contracts associated with them are more than a tad expensive. How much are we paying just to stay in contact with each other?
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Technology items are dirt cheap. A white label tablet with decent specs is 100$, a no name android phone 150$, decent gaming PC - 500$ ... its the fashionable tech items that are expensive. And the abusive carrier practices.
Toenex 13y ago
British women probably spend thousands on petrol but I doubt they want to read about it.

circuiter 13y ago

Yes, but if women want to read about technology they can buy a technology magazine. How much of Men's magazines column inches are given to tech?

tomchristie 13y ago
> How much of Men's magazines column inches are given to tech? As a rule, shit loads.
eonil 13y ago
Currently, tech magazines for men is nothing fun to women. In majority, women want artistic fun rather then numerical fun. Again, in majority, women has no interest on benchmark number stuffs, and more interested in which app look more beautiful. Such as "Best sexy looking app top 10" rather than "World fastest super-computer top 10". In other words, their behavior has not been changed. Only the medium has been changed. It was fashion and beauty stuffs before, and now it just expanded to electronics.
- homeomorphic 13y ago
  1950 called. They want their worldview back.
  - omonra 13y ago
    Judging from the OP, he's right and you're living in lala-land. Ie - it could be a case of major conspiracy on the part of publishers (who are all women btw) to keep their readers away from tech. Or they could simply be giving their readers what they want.
    - im3w1l 13y ago
      Or there could be an unfilled niche.
      - PeterisP 13y ago
        If (masses of) women really had a need like that, they'd buy the current tech magazines - it wouldn't fit the niche perfectly, but it would at least partly fulfill that need. They don't. Which is evidence that there is no such unfilled niche.
        halostatue 13y ago
        Or, much more likely, they aren't interested in the male focus of said tech magazines. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738657 for a quick look at the covers of the tech magazine T3. Are you saying the average woman would really want to read a tech magazine with that sort of focus? We're not talking CACM here; we're talking tech magazines that, for the longest time, celebrated conference booth babes.
        PeterisP 13y ago
        If what you say is true, then all the world's women with the desire for reading tech would flock to the few tech magazines that have less of "that sort of focus", they exist. This would cause these "non-booth-babed" magazines to have a disproportionally large amount of women buyers, which they would see immediately... but it's not happening. Reality is that which doesn't go away if you disbelieve or dislike it.
ColinWright 13y ago
My wife reports to me that if she wants to buy a copy of Android Magazine she has to shoulder aside men who are much larger than she, and fish among the magazines about fishing, cars, "Lad's Mags" (ugh (her words)), and similar things. "Not fun" (direct quotation).
- girvo 13y ago
  Exactly. Hell, I (as a upper middle class young male) get annoyed when trying to find a tech magazine on the shelves. Hidden amongst a dozen other things, and usually a terrible selection. Sigh... Not that it matters, my favourite magazine (Atomic MPC) that I subbed to for 5 years folded into PC Authority :(
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Ok, so that's a message to retailers that they might get more sales by rearranging magazines on their shelves - how do we get this message to them?
tommorris 13y ago
Have a look at the front covers of T3 magazine some time... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=t3+magazine&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=t3+magazine&tbm=isch There's a theme there.
- revelation 13y ago
  That's a tech magazine, even if the cover doesn't imply that...
  - tommorris 13y ago
    I know it's a tech magazine. I'm just somewhat flummoxed what the attractive busty woman on the front of every magazine has to do with iPhones or whatever.
    - delian66 13y ago
      The theory is that seeing them close together, will cause an association in the (assumed male) reader's mind, between the qualities of the attractive sexy model and the product, so that when the reader sees the product in the future, he will be attracted to it on a subconscious level, and thus more likely to buy it ... or in other words, "sex sells".
nicholassmith 13y ago
A reasonably large amount, ranging from cool toys to the latest apps and random websites they've come across. Add on a lot of technology magazines may as well be men's magazines due to the content focus, tonality and usage of scantily clad women caressing the latest tech products.
halostatue 13y ago
Or I could buy Playboy. The tech and music coverage in there is very good. Despite being a “men's” magazine in the most direct sense, the breadth of coverage (music, movies—both new releases and home video, video games, automotive tech, men's fashion, and technology in general, plus the politics, interviews, reporting, and fiction) is generally good. GQ also has fairly good broad-based coverage. A couple of other magazines that aren't strictly men’s magazines but have a male editorial slant do much the same (VF and Rolling Stone). Men's magazines tend to cover far broader interests than women's magazines. Tech magazines, on the other hand, almost exclusively cater to a young male audience.

cstross 13y ago

It makes me think that these magazines are not actually designed to optimally interest their readers, but simply to grab their attention and then mold it to their advertisers interests. The whole point of the editorial content in trade publishing is to sell advertising pages. Back when I was a columnist for Computer Shopper (in the UK, circa 1999-2005, during the golden autumn of the computer magazine publishing era -- before direct PC sales over the internet gutted it) the ABC audited circulation of the mag was around 135,000 readers (multiply by 5 for an equivalent US readership). Cover price was on the order of £2.35, so you could expect revenue of £317,000-odd per issue from paid subscribers/store customers. Around 120 pages consisted of editorial content, plus up to 550 pages of advertising. (This ratio holds in the US, too, where to take advantage of printed matter bulk postal rates magazines had to have no less than 20% editorial content mixed in with the ads.) I don't have exact revenue figures, but a half-page black and white ad in CS sold at the time for roughly £2000. So, ignoring the premium for colour and blow-in ads, we can approximate the advertising revenue to £2.2M per issue. In actual fact, colour ads sold for a lot more, so the revenue per issue would be closer to £3M. The take-home here is that at most 14% of the magazine's revenue came direct from the readers -- indeed, the readers were probably getting the colourful 650-page object for the cost of printing alone. The remaining 86% -- or more -- of the magazine's revenue came from advertising. Now, from a business perspective, whose interests do you expect to weigh more heavily on the mind of the publisher -- the readers, or the advertisers?

rwmj 13y ago
I was going to say: Since technology sales are higher, why aren't technology companies advertising more? But the markup on cosmetics (scented water with fancy labels) is huge, so the cosmetics companies have much more money to spread around in advertising.
- rhizome 13y ago
  People would likely forget about cosmetics to some degree if they weren't advertised so much, they are pure luxury. Technology provides functionality (beyond luxury) used in everyday life, so it doesn't have to advertise as much. Cosmetics have to advertise to just stay alive.

hrktb 13y ago

Is money spent relevant though ? I spend more on car insurance, gas and other maintenance fees than on entertainment, and really don't care about cars as long as mine doesn't break. A lot of women might have as little interest in the next Samsung phone.

workbench 13y ago
Money spend is almost irrelevant and comparing it to cosmetics is mostly pointless. Especially when that annual number doesn't even cover the cost of a single major tech purchase. Time invested in researching purchase and how much they cared about purchasing decisions in each area would be far more relevant. Also why do women have to be treated like mindless drones that have to be protected from evil magazines? Critics really need to start giving them more credit. "The endless pages of thin flawless models make young women frown critically at themselves in the mirror" Mens magazines are full of muscled up sports stars, if I read them I'm pretty certain it wouldn't make me get all upset when I look in the mirror. People are not stupid

pgsandstrom 13y ago

The amount of money you spend on something does not equal your interest in it.

berrypicker 13y ago

Those stats are pretty much useless. Technology is more expensive. Hey, women spend more on cars than cosmetics, should they include car columns too? Buying a laptop, an iPhone and a tablet or something will cost way more than a year's worth of make up, doesn't say anything about a person's real interests. Also, the average British woman is not the average Women's magazine reader. It's more likely that readers of women's magazines 1. don't spend as much on technology, or 2. if they do, it's simply the case of buying an expensive smartphone or whatever to listen to music or browse Facebook.

Shivetya 13y ago

It makes me think technology items are just too damn expensive. Phones and the contracts associated with them are more than a tad expensive. How much are we paying just to stay in contact with each other?

venomsnake 13y ago
Technology items are dirt cheap. A white label tablet with decent specs is 100$, a no name android phone 150$, decent gaming PC - 500$ ... its the fashionable tech items that are expensive. And the abusive carrier practices.

Toenex 13y ago

British women probably spend thousands on petrol but I doubt they want to read about it.