# Ever add up the advertizing space in a magazine?



## Tightwad (Mar 28, 2014)

Well I have in the past and I just did so again. OK, so I had some spare time on my hands, but the effort had me :rolleyes2: in disbelief.

This car magazine has 146 pages including the inside covers.

There are 87 1/6 pages of advertizing. That works out to 59.7 percent of wasted paper that I paid for. 

No wonder I can read through them so fast as there are hardly any pages of any substance.


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## Ponderling (Mar 1, 2013)

I was once gifted a years subscription to 'this old house' magazine. I enjoyed the how to articles. 
The ads though.... 'house component porn' I would call them.
I would cut out and discard every double ad page i.e. has a full page ad on both front and back of the same piece of paper. Typically there would be 20-24 pages that would go that way.

Wife subscribes to Toronto Life. It does not double page nearly as much; about 6-8 pages per issue. Still as many ads, but smaller one sprinkled around.


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## lightcycle (Mar 24, 2012)

Beauty magazines are even worse. I estimate 80% ads, and the rest of the 20% of the articles - half of them are about the products themselves. Somehow my wife got on the mailing list for one, and despite many phone calls, they just wouldn't cancel the subscription. Gotta keep those subscribership numbers up so they can charge more for ads.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Magazines, like TV, these days exist to deliver advertising to you interrupted occasionally by content - not the other way around.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Imagine how much they'd cost if there wasn't the advertising...remember, even with all of it, magazines are still going broke.


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## OurBigFatWallet (Jan 20, 2014)

I read the Metro newspaper on my morning commute. I estimate at least 50% is advertising - mainly banks and new/used vehicles. I guess I shouldn't complain since the newspaper is actually free but it seems like it's getting worse


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## RBull (Jan 20, 2013)

Generally, typical target advertising ratios for most North American newspapers are 60% advertising, 40% news. Advertising provides in the range of 70% of revenue of paid newspapers and obviously 100% for the free ones.

For magazines it's often a higher ratio.


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