In any case, I’d rather see hundreds of pages of advertising than have magazines going broke. While I am a full-blooded ‘Merican consumer, I can still sift through what I don’t want to read, and get to what I do.

I do think the advertisements that are set up to look like content generated by the magazine are irritating. We all know the ones with the “Paid Advertisement” listed in small type on the tops or bottoms of the pages. How stupid do the advertisers think we are? Wait… don’t answer, they’re probably right. I’ll have to do a little thinking on the paid product spotlights that the mags provide. I wonder what laws there are to govern such things. Would a paid product spotlight require a disclosure of payment, like this one, from rockclimbing.com?

“Full Disclosure: The company that manufactured this item provided it free of charge to rockclimbing.com, who in turn provided it as compensation to the reviewer for his review.”

Right? Over simplification?

An ad that has an image that makes you stare at it for longer than a few seconds…imagining yourself in that situation/imagining what the subject is thinking/etc. is almost as good (if not better) than actual articles in less appealing magazines!