[sayrer]

I think it can be true in some situations. If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. Same for camera magazines.

News content really doesn't benefit, though. Just clickbait stuff.

[chankstein38]

I don't know man I've never turned to an ad in a magazine and been thankful it was there. Ads could evaporate completely from existence tomorrow and I'd miss absolutely nothing.

[lesuorac]

Isn't that almost the whole point of the magazine?

I guess for something a bit more catch-all like "Rolling Stone" Ads would detract.

But for something like USA Hockey, honestly the Ads are more interesting than half the actual content. Although seeing the same 4 ads for home skating rinks has gotten old.

Although I guess this would be more akin to searching Google for "new hockey products" and then it would make a lot of sense to return pure ads.

[chankstein38]

That's fair! To be honest I haven't looked at a magazine in a long time unless I was in a waiting room so maybe I am just a bad example.

[20after4]

adbusters(https://www.adbusters.org/) is the only magazine I ever liked.

[glimshe]

Some older magazines, like Computer Shopper, were 90%+ ads. I enjoyed seeing ads in game magazines too, because they were a great way to find out what's coming soon on top of the magazine's preview section. So while I agree that ads are frequently annoying, in particular when I'm trying to search for stuff, ads are not universally bad.

[CharlesW]

> If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads.

I'll bite…because they're pretty? Or because how else would one stay on top of the latest Axe body spray releases?

[saalweachter]

Woodworking magazines are 1/3 about shop organization, 1/3 about project ideas & techniques, and 1/3 about the latest and oldest woodworking tools and where to buy them.

[keepper]

Because who then pays for the content? Time and time again, the average person has shown that they will rather spend X times more on a trivial thing than content.

This is more acute on hard news. Where a single page article may cost 100k to produce, yet wont be able to be monetized per its "cost to produce".

So yes, it would be a disappointment to lose "great content". now, here lies in the kicker. You get to decide great content with your patronage ( or lack there of)

[JellyBeanThief]

What I want is for ads to be sequestered in places for people who are actually looking to solve something. Just take all the ads in the camera magazine and put them at the end, neatly categorized. If I'm interested in buying a new lens, then I'll flip to the lens category. If I'm not interested in buying a new lens, I won't.

"But what about things you didn't know you wanted?" I can't want something I don't know about. I can want something I can imagine, in which case I might go searching to see if someone else has made it reality. But I don't need others trying to artificially inflate my demand for goods and services.

[throwaway14356]

things you didn't know exist, if worthy, should have an article

[dagw]

But then those articles just become the ads

[jameshart]

I don’t think Rolling Stone is a great example - the conceit of a music magazine is that its content is curated by tastemakers untainted by the marketing machinery of the industry they’re reviewing. The content is all promoting acts and albums and musicians who are the products of music labels, but it’s not ‘advertising’.

But ‘Computer Shopper’ magazine on the other hand was half magazine, half catalog. The ads are the point.

[neuralRiot]

A magazine without ads would be fine if the content would be good enough. Personally I didn’t hate ads until they got completely obnoxious, irrelevant and distracting and lately invasive and creepy.