Advertising in Comics through an Economic Lense
The October 2018 article “The Economics of the Modern American Comic Book Market” by Jerry Hionis and YoungHa Ki in the Journal of Cultural Economics looks into the economics surrounding the production of comic books and how the market has changed over time. Part of the article’s analysis focuses on advertising in comics — what proportion of the pages in issues contain advertisements, and what the content of those ads is.
In their investigation into advertising within comics, Hionis and Ki conducted a survey of 355 individual comic books released in 2016, from both Marvel and DC. They found that 30–40% of space within the average comic is ad space, and asserted that this space is a vital source of revenue for publishers. Hionis and Ki also found that comics which included a smaller proportion of ads overall, such as Marvel and Image Comics, cost more than average.
For my own investigations I am interested in delving into the content of advertising within comics — what products are being advertised and what they use for appeal. This articles analysis does a sort of this content analysis, though it’s “other” category is more broad than my own will be. Hionis and Ki found that most of the content advertised within comic books was self referential to the publisher, whether to other comics, or to related media such as movies and TV shows. The frequency of ads for media from the same publisher makes sense on multiple levels. By using its own ad space the publisher has a convenient way to promote new products. Additionally, a current comic reader is likely to also enjoy either other comics or comic inspired media. By introducing current audiences to new content, comic publishers can sell a larger amount of content to the same audience.
The ads for products unrelated to comics also provide interesting insights. Though within this analysis these products are mostly lumped into the “other” category, as the authors point out, these items provide important insights into how publishers and advertisers perceive their audiences. As mentioned in an earlier section of the article, there have been no recent reliable studies into the demographics of comic book audiences. However, one way to gain some insight into comic audiences is to examine the types of products being advertised in comic books. The popularity of ads for things like cars, shaving kits, and credit cards implies that audiences are in large percentages adult men. The nature of these advertisements reveals who advertisers think readers are. Hionis and Ki assert that “One could postulate that true diversity in readership will be identified once the advertising reflects it,” a position I agree with and look forward examining more in depth.
Overall this article provides a very good overview of the economics of the comic book industry as a whole, and provides some important details concerning advertising within comics, and what its content reveals about both advertisers and their audiences.
