4 ms·

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 the

by 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.
  - collyw 13y ago
    Yeah, but women and men view the world differently. In general women place more emphasis on aesthetic things, whereas guys are more into fixing things / how they work. I am sure there are loads of counter examples, but as a general thing it quite easy to see.
    - timje1 13y ago
      Sorry but that's a pretty throwaway opinion, and potentially offensive, without a study or two to back it up.
      - hrkristian 13y ago
        That's just not right on your part. My sister, when researching baby monitors, had to resort to male-dominated forums. She was interested in the technical details and experiences of these before buying, but women-forums only ever covered aesthetics and feelings towards the topic. You could say my example is anecdotal and worthless, but what I am describing is a large statistical pool with both sides represented. And this isn't exactly news, you can be as offended as you'd like, but every single area of our society barring the higher echelons of science tells us this same story. The fact that you think it's offensive makes you the offender. I should think most of the world couldn't care less. Myself included, it's just a matter of interests. Disclaimer: I know every rule has plenty of exceptions.
        rhizome 13y ago
        The offense is in attributing it to intrinsic differences between men and women. If you can supply some information that your sister's baby-monitoring experience was due to natural differences, vs., for example, conditioning by advertising, then that would be helpful.
        hrkristian 13y ago
        I find your view on what is offensive fundamentally wrong. Noting an arbitrary difference, like say "those ten guys are very interested in that woman's behind, while those ten women are clearly focussing on what this man is saying" is just observation (and not a reflection of my real world view, merely an example). Anyone who attributes negativity to either of these observations are betting offensive. I should think aesthetics and personal feelings with regards to baby monitors can be helpful, in my example however, it wasn't. You chose to think it negative the female dominated forum judged differently than a male dominated one, if that's the case you are offending, not me.
- praptak 13y ago
  My hypothesis is that there's a more important factor. Cosmetics companies' expected return on an ad in a women's magazine is higher than tech companies' because of the focus. For a tech company women are at best 50% of their target market. For a cosmetics company, women are the market. Their Excel sheets just show they can bid higher on the ads than tech.
- skriticos2 13y ago
  I'd hazard to guess that cosmetics are closer to the impulse-buy zone and enjoy a larger availability. You can walk in any supermarket / drugstore and find a cosmetics selection at which point advertising influence kicks in. You are familiar with the advertised brands in the offering and more likely to buy them. Tech on the other hand is a $300 upward proposition a peace. That's far outside the impulse buy zone, which is why advertising this works differently. Much more product placement and bundled distribution channels (phone shops) in play here.. and caries.
- cstross 13y ago
  You nailed it on the mark-up. Also, ad sales in print computer magazines fell off a cliff after 2001 and never recovered. (Last time I looked, the ad page count in CS had dropped to about 200 pages, from a peak of nearly 600 pages.) The drop was due to (a) lots of the smaller PC OEMs merging or going bust (a mag could only sell so many 12-24 page glossy advertising segments to Dell or HP), (b) the rise of internet advertising on the back of home broadband (over a 56K modem ads were painful; with 512K and up broadband they were tolerable and far more effective), and (c) dwindling profit margins. Oh, also CS had two distinct customer bases: the hardcore folks who bought it for the specialist columns (the UK mag, unlike the Ziff-Davis Computer Shopper, had stuff like assembly language programming tutorials and an Atari ST enthusiast's corner as late as 2004) and who propped up the ABC circulation figures by subscribing (and whose ABC figures in turn were used by sales to convince advertisers that the magazine was worth purchasing space in), and the newsstand casuals, who wanted a new PC, would buy an issue for the ads, buy their PC, then never buy another copy. And of these latter, according to market surveys, only 15% ever installed any software on their machine: they bought from OEMs with Windows and Office pre-installed along with a bunch of not-quite-crapware, and used what they'd bought as-is. The former vanished first, to places like Slashdot, Hacker News, and more recondite corners of the web. And the latter dried up as google made it easier to find cheap PCs via the internet.
001sky 13y ago
Its worth noting that ad spend is a functin of deep pockets, no relevance or general importance to society. One historical comparison is that during the financila crisis, the Auto industry's ad spend plummeted and the top TV advertiser became Mobile phones. The importance of auto's, however, has generally remained unchanged. Its just that advertising is a key element in the business model of soem industries and is less in others. Clearly, given the markups and the insecurities preyed upon by the industry, Beauty products are heavily reliant on ads for both sales and luxurious margins.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  It's ridiculous to state "The importance of auto's, however, has generally remained unchanged." because car sales nearly halved between 2007 and 2009. New cars (and advertising of them) were objectively pretty much irrelevant during that time. A source for illustration: http://www.macrotrends.net/1372/auto-and-light-truck-sales-historical-chart http://www.macrotrends.net/1372/auto-and-light-truck-sales-h...
  - 001sky 13y ago
    I meant something more akin to "miles driven" as a benchmark for utility/importance [0]. Yours is a good clarification and qualification, however. ______ 2010> 2,648,456 2009> 2,633,248 [0] http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/vm1.cfm#foot5 http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/vm...
gadders 13y ago
It's like what people say about Facebook, Google etc - if the service is free (or like here heavily subsidised), you're not the user, you're the product.

by cstross 13y ago

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.
- collyw 13y ago
  Yeah, but women and men view the world differently. In general women place more emphasis on aesthetic things, whereas guys are more into fixing things / how they work. I am sure there are loads of counter examples, but as a general thing it quite easy to see.
  - timje1 13y ago
    Sorry but that's a pretty throwaway opinion, and potentially offensive, without a study or two to back it up.
    - hrkristian 13y ago
      That's just not right on your part. My sister, when researching baby monitors, had to resort to male-dominated forums. She was interested in the technical details and experiences of these before buying, but women-forums only ever covered aesthetics and feelings towards the topic. You could say my example is anecdotal and worthless, but what I am describing is a large statistical pool with both sides represented. And this isn't exactly news, you can be as offended as you'd like, but every single area of our society barring the higher echelons of science tells us this same story. The fact that you think it's offensive makes you the offender. I should think most of the world couldn't care less. Myself included, it's just a matter of interests. Disclaimer: I know every rule has plenty of exceptions.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        The offense is in attributing it to intrinsic differences between men and women. If you can supply some information that your sister's baby-monitoring experience was due to natural differences, vs., for example, conditioning by advertising, then that would be helpful.
        hrkristian 13y ago
        I find your view on what is offensive fundamentally wrong. Noting an arbitrary difference, like say "those ten guys are very interested in that woman's behind, while those ten women are clearly focussing on what this man is saying" is just observation (and not a reflection of my real world view, merely an example). Anyone who attributes negativity to either of these observations are betting offensive. I should think aesthetics and personal feelings with regards to baby monitors can be helpful, in my example however, it wasn't. You chose to think it negative the female dominated forum judged differently than a male dominated one, if that's the case you are offending, not me.
praptak 13y ago
My hypothesis is that there's a more important factor. Cosmetics companies' expected return on an ad in a women's magazine is higher than tech companies' because of the focus. For a tech company women are at best 50% of their target market. For a cosmetics company, women are the market. Their Excel sheets just show they can bid higher on the ads than tech.
skriticos2 13y ago
I'd hazard to guess that cosmetics are closer to the impulse-buy zone and enjoy a larger availability. You can walk in any supermarket / drugstore and find a cosmetics selection at which point advertising influence kicks in. You are familiar with the advertised brands in the offering and more likely to buy them. Tech on the other hand is a $300 upward proposition a peace. That's far outside the impulse buy zone, which is why advertising this works differently. Much more product placement and bundled distribution channels (phone shops) in play here.. and caries.
cstross 13y ago
You nailed it on the mark-up. Also, ad sales in print computer magazines fell off a cliff after 2001 and never recovered. (Last time I looked, the ad page count in CS had dropped to about 200 pages, from a peak of nearly 600 pages.) The drop was due to (a) lots of the smaller PC OEMs merging or going bust (a mag could only sell so many 12-24 page glossy advertising segments to Dell or HP), (b) the rise of internet advertising on the back of home broadband (over a 56K modem ads were painful; with 512K and up broadband they were tolerable and far more effective), and (c) dwindling profit margins. Oh, also CS had two distinct customer bases: the hardcore folks who bought it for the specialist columns (the UK mag, unlike the Ziff-Davis Computer Shopper, had stuff like assembly language programming tutorials and an Atari ST enthusiast's corner as late as 2004) and who propped up the ABC circulation figures by subscribing (and whose ABC figures in turn were used by sales to convince advertisers that the magazine was worth purchasing space in), and the newsstand casuals, who wanted a new PC, would buy an issue for the ads, buy their PC, then never buy another copy. And of these latter, according to market surveys, only 15% ever installed any software on their machine: they bought from OEMs with Windows and Office pre-installed along with a bunch of not-quite-crapware, and used what they'd bought as-is. The former vanished first, to places like Slashdot, Hacker News, and more recondite corners of the web. And the latter dried up as google made it easier to find cheap PCs via the internet.

001sky 13y ago

Its worth noting that ad spend is a functin of deep pockets, no relevance or general importance to society. One historical comparison is that during the financila crisis, the Auto industry's ad spend plummeted and the top TV advertiser became Mobile phones. The importance of auto's, however, has generally remained unchanged. Its just that advertising is a key element in the business model of soem industries and is less in others. Clearly, given the markups and the insecurities preyed upon by the industry, Beauty products are heavily reliant on ads for both sales and luxurious margins.

PeterisP 13y ago
It's ridiculous to state "The importance of auto's, however, has generally remained unchanged." because car sales nearly halved between 2007 and 2009. New cars (and advertising of them) were objectively pretty much irrelevant during that time. A source for illustration: http://www.macrotrends.net/1372/auto-and-light-truck-sales-historical-chart http://www.macrotrends.net/1372/auto-and-light-truck-sales-h...
- 001sky 13y ago
  I meant something more akin to "miles driven" as a benchmark for utility/importance [0]. Yours is a good clarification and qualification, however. ______ 2010> 2,648,456 2009> 2,633,248 [0] http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/vm1.cfm#foot5 http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/vm...

gadders 13y ago

It's like what people say about Facebook, Google etc - if the service is free (or like here heavily subsidised), you're not the user, you're the product.