[magoghm]

The ads were not annoying at the time of release. I really enjoyed reading those ads and finding out about products specs and prices, remember that we didn’t have the Web back then and Byte magazine was my main source of information about what was available.

[Someone]

Indeed. Complaining about the ads in Byte would have been like complaining about the ads in the yellow pages.

Byte almost was reverse Playboy: you almost didn’t read it for the articles.

[therealcamino]

Even more true for Computer Shopper! At its peak it was probably an inch thick every month, and 99% ads. But in pre-Internet days, very useful.

[C1sc0cat]

Really! the articles where the main point - just whish I had had the nerve to use the $25 diy modem Steve Garcia for one project instead of paying £300 for an answer and £600 for an answer originate.

[vram22]

>Steve Garcia

Steve Ciarcia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia

His BYTE electronics DIY project articles in his Circuit Cellar column were so well-written that I used to enjoy browsing them even though I'm not an electronics guy, gleaning what I could about the topic. He even did one about a 32-bit computer, when 8 and 16 bits were still the standard! The Definicon motherboard/CPU, I think it was about.

[rsecora]

¿Steve Ciarcia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia

[acomjean]

I think it “creative computing” or nibble magazine that had a postcard where you could check off interests and send it back. I did this in middle school and would occasionally get mailings about products (and credit card offers).

Magazine ads where the way to get targeted views.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That was a standard system in the magazine trade back then. It was part of the service to advertisers. They would collect all the queries for each advertiser every month and pass them on.

Those ads were unbelievably lucrative. Each page cost thousands of dollars, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, plus smaller classifieds. Freelancers were paid fairly generously, but that outgoing was a drop in the ocean compared to the monthly ad income. Byte was posting profits of around $10m/year in the 80s.

Edit to add: many readers saw the ads as informative rather than intrusive and distracting. This was partly because many were creative and fun, but also because they went into far more technical detail than you'd see today, so they were almost a supplement to the official written copy.