One thing we don’t talk about enough on this blog is magazine insert advertising. We should because it makes up a significant segment of our business and is still a very relevant form of high-impact marketing. Recently I was flipping through Inc Magazine’s special edition featuring the Inc 500 companies. I have a really odd habit of reading through magazines from the back cover to the front. Am I the only one? Anyway, I noticed as I got closer to the beginning of the magazine that the ad saturation increased significantly. This makes perfect sense, but it got me thinking about what ads I was actually looking at and which ones I was ignoring.

I soon realized that when I saw an image that related to something I was interested in I stopped and glanced at the ad. I know, I know, this is print advertising 101, but let me make the point. For example, if I saw a guy in a suite standing there with a self-assured look on his face, I knew the ad must be for some sort of business or financial service I wasn’t interested in. If I saw a large picture of an iPod or cool electronic device I usually gave it a quick glance, because I am a bit of a tech-junkie. If I saw a picture of a woman, well, I usually gave it a glace. Again, print advertising 101.

Our brains have the amazing ability to fill in the blanks, saving us from unnecessary processing and allowing us to gather information very quickly. You only really notice what is changing in a scene in front of you, or what you’re specifically focusing on.  All of the background scenery is assumed by your brain and saves you from needing to process an entire scene. However, this has its drawback as you may skip over or not notice important information. For an amazing demonstration of this effect click here.

Getting back to magazine advertising, I think this effect has significant consequences when you’re talking about spending thousands of dollars on a single ad. Most magazines have extremely high ad space rates, so it’s simply not feasible to design an ad that isn’t very interesting. As always, I try to give you solutions not just problems!

Structural Graphics has been designing dimensional magazine inserts for nearly 30 years. The same marketers, like HBO, Conde Nast and NBC have been coming back to us time and time again because they know what they need to do to own a magazine. They want their ad to have a commanding presence in the magazine, not just a page number.

According to a Starch Readership Survey (2007) about 40% of readers remember seeing a flat ad. In contrast, 91% of readers remember seeing a dimensional ad. I personally have no idea who the 9% of people who don’t remember seeing a dimensional ad are, but what do I know? I have, however, seen many samples from magazine insert projects we have done and don’t see how the ad could possibly be missed. Perhaps some of the survey participants were given magazines that they found personally objectionable so they didn’t really flip through them. Who knows, people are odd, heck, some people read magazines backwards.

Click here to see some really cool magazine inserts!