Magazine Ad Sales Down: What Are You Doing?

If you haven’t heard by now, magazine ad sales are starting to go the way of the newspaper. Yeah, it’s more bad news for all of you. Folio reported yesterday on the Publisher’s Information Bureau’s latest study on the subject &#151 and the results weren’t positive. So what are you doing to fix it?

You’re going to hear this question a lot in the future. And although there are an infinite number of hypothetical answers, we want to know what you all think should be done &#151 where should ads be placed that will actually earn some money.

Here’s the general layout: Print advertising is dwindling, TV spots are increasingly easy to ignore, pre-roll on Web video isn’t panning out as many hoped (yet), mobile/emerging has yet to be standardized and every day we report on more layoffs.

The Wall Street Journal has a story on the same issue today, and here’s a remark that illustrates our point: “Areas like mobile, virtual worlds and widgets are expected to be hit particularly hard, as it remains unclear what kind of impact ads in these media have.”

This statement is made in the context of Chrysler, which considering it may soon be merging with GM, is apparently curtailing spending.

Historically speaking, tough times are often when the best innovation takes place &#151 when the clutter dies off, a resounding message can break through the clouds providing at beam of light to focus on. Is advertising (which we feel is arguably the most innovative communications industry) really this fucking pathetic?

OK so we’re clearly not being specific here. And we know this is general &#151 so please take two seconds are in the comments section tell us what you think will float to the top. What’s the answer? How can we stop the blood loss? What will save advertising? Discuss.

More: “Newspaper Sites’ ROI not Filling the Void”

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