According to spring 1999 Simmons data, 81.5 percent of adults age 18 and up say they read one or more magazines. Specialty magazines allow advertisers to target consumers demographically, by product affinity, or by lifestyle. Magazine ads can be highly creative and aesthetically appealing through the effective use of photography, graphics, color, and copy. An in-depth advertising message can be created to appear more like editorial copy than an advertisement, although most magazines require such advertorials to be clearly designated as ads. Advertisers and consumers have over 18,000 magazine titles from which to choose, many of which do not survive their first year of publication.
Magazines contain so much advertising that ad readership and recall is minimal.
The typical magazine contains over 50 percent advertising, so there's little opportunity for consumers to absorb both the editorial content and advertising. Because of diverse readership and consumer readership behavior, most magazines miss most of their target audience. The average issue of Business Week reaches less than three percent of all professional managerial adults, and Good Housekeeping misses more than 85 percent of adult women. You can improve on magazines' low ad readership and recall scores by adding a cost efficient Radio schedule to your media mix. This way you can extend the reach against your target consumer and build the message frequency necessary to a successful campaign.