I was at Chapters today flipping through a magazine when it occurred to me how many advertisements were in it. After looking in a couple others, even big name ones, there were still a huge number of ads. Let's do the math, here. The first magazine I was looking at was only a short thing, 55 pages or so. I counted it up and there were around 20 full page ads, plus some extra pages covered with smaller ads, plus a couple of 'side bar' ads. That's insane. So, an already overpriced $6.50 CND magazine is at least 35% advertisements, along with some extra added in ads and a few articles with one of those graphic things covering one and a half pages that leaves only half of a page of text. Clearly this would need to have some really amazing articles to make it worth buying. Of course, this is and has always been a trend with the magazine industry. People like their articles all jazzed up with images and little drawings and such. And, as they say, money doesn't grow on trees. Making a mag is a costly investment, and it takes a lot of these ads to keep costs down. Still, it isn't hard to believe that sometimes publishers decide to put in more than necessary to make a few extra bucks. Now, though, with blogs, RSS feeds and sites like Digg gaining in popularity every day, the internet may be cutting into magazine's profits more than you think.

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