Brother, Can You Spare an Ad?

We avoided it as long as we could, but finally it was time to face facts: magazines are all about advertising. As D.B. Scott puts it, magazines are in the business of renting readers to advertisers. While it would be lovely if readers were willing to pay as much as it costs to produce shiny mags showcasing even shinier wit, it just doesn’t work that way. Most magazines derive only a fraction of their revenue from subscriptions and newsstand sales. And while some are lucky enough to have endowments, grants or funding (a topic we’ll learn about later), most depend largely on advertising to fill the gap.

Kasey and I were lucky enough to have a chance to bend the ear of Doug Bennet, publisher of North Island Publishing, on this crucial subject. North Island publishes a number of trade magazines, including the-much-loved-and-now-online-only Masthead, Canada's magazine about magazines.

We only had an hour or so before the coffee shop closed, so we focused on the two big issues affecting advertising: (1) the recession, and (2) the internet. The first has led to a decline in ad sales, as companies slash their advertising budgets to survive the crunch, and the second has impacted subscription and newsstand sales, which decreases readership and narrows the audience that advertisers can reach.

Magazines have been impacted to varying extents by both forces, but it’s safe to say that when your publisher gets that glazed look in her eye, she’s probably strategizing about how to compensate for lost or endangered ad revenue – perhaps by fundraising or expanding into new areas like books and trade shows – or how to make money from those costly websites – perhaps by charging readers for access or by raising internet ad rates. Then again, maybe she's just thinking about that box of doughnuts that someone brought into the office.