Adblock on Print
How I decided to fight back marketers that have taken over one of my favorite magazines.
Since I was a youngling, I have been reading Gentlemen Quarterly, also known as GQ. I always have been submerged on the pop culture section of the magazine. The fashion tips have always prevented me from looking like an idiot before I go out, and the main articles give good topics of conversation along with my peers. Beautiful women and articles on how to be a cool cat in our present day are what the brand of GQ magazine is all about. Parallel to my life running into maturity, the internet has been changing things in the real world quite a bit. In recent years Adblocking software has become very popular with kids my age 😎. We are super tired of companies trying to get our attention. It’s kind of stressful, tbh 😒.
I miss magazines, I miss the printed version of GQ. I used to have a huge collection before I went super feng shui, and threw away a lot of my material possessions back in 2012. Someone recently gave me a GQ in print and I figured I should give it a read. I was overwhelmed how many ads the magazine had. Maybe ever since I installed AdBlock, I might have been a bit protected from too much marketing, or maybe I have discovered this awesome new parallel universe where ads don’t exist.
My GQ.
Back in art college, we spent half of a semester learning how to design a magazine. Articles, photographs and the flow of information. We, however, never got taught on how Ads take over after editorial input. We used to design beautiful spreads, and we put a lot of thought where thing get placed and how they connect with one another. Then, later to find out the adverts and marketers try to steal all our thunder.
Weekend Project.
Soooooo, I decided to take all the ads from my printed GQ, which by the way feature Kim Kardashian on their July cover. Mainly, because I wanted to see how the magazine feels after this teardown.
The project took about an hour and to be honest I raised a lot of deep questions to myself that I wasn’t expecting. Here are some of them.
Why do we even write opinion pieces or essays?
I think people that sit down and think a lot about things get very opinionated about their focus.
What is the real definition of magazine?
A magazine, I think is a collection of article guided by the editor that creates boundaries what the content should be about.
Can Medium be considered a magazine?
I don’t think there is a main editor of Medium, but there are publications with editorial content on the site.
How should companies present themselves to us?
Adverts are probably always going to be around in one shape or another. The question is how are they going to be presented themselves to us. If they continue to be sneaky and try to blend themselves with the main content, detailed oriented readers are not going to be pleased. If they are interrupting mid art form, they are as well going to be annoying.
Why are all the ads are before the main article on the GQ issue?
From the main article about Kim Kardashian onto the last page, there were no more ads. Probably because the editors pushing back where ads can be, or it could also be that advertisers don’t see much value in the second half of the magazine.
Editorial Ads are sneaky, but is that bad?
Something that I have also noticed is how magazine ads are trying to be like editorial spreads.
Kit & Ace is a really nice clothing company and I appreciate the photoshoot feel of the spread, but I wonder if many people realize that is an ad or an article piece by the magazine.
GQ is an institution that refers themselves as the place where you find the best fashion advice. But this is not an advice, this is a corporate company buying ad space on a magazine that might not have any oversight on the look of the ad.
Who is paying for your content?
I know this sounds like it’s all fun and games, a craft project on a Sunday afternoon. But I think it might be a very important question to ask ourselves. What kind of content do we want to consume, who is going to pay for it, and how much will we be willing to pay for it. Editors, writers, photographer and video producers have to make a living. So who is going to pay for their salaries?
Are companies really getting their return on investments?
Magazines ads are way more expensive than web ads, but are they really working? You can’t really track them the way you can track web ads. How are they justifying their prices? I think it’s happening faster than print media realized, but advertisers are rushing out of print media faster than ever because they don’t get the tracking benefits the web.
Conclusion
I hope that I don’t sound like a socialist and that I live in a place where capitalism doesn’t take advantage of the artists. I really think there are cool and artistic companies that can sponsor artists in a better way. On my following articles, I will be exploring new and hopefully better ways how to experience ads, and how we can get introduced to new companies in a more pleasant way. If you are interested in following me on this journey, follow me on Medium or Twitter, or any other social media.
