Advertising in Print (SkyMall) ~ large images are important!

Just got back from taking the kids to Disneyland. From where I live in Texas it’s a 3 hour flight so there’s plenty of time for reading, watching a movie, taking a nap or whatever you enjoy doing while flying. One thing that I think most people do is pick up the SkyMall magazine and flip through it. Since my mind is always thinking marketing, I was lucky to have two women sitting near and in front of me that were looking at SkyMall magazine at the same time.

There are so many products in SkyMall that the ads need to really stand out for the viewer to stop flipping and actually take a look at them. With these two women flipping through the magazine I was in a perfect spot to study what pages and products they were stopping on. One woman was in her 30′s, while the other was in her 60′s. So these two women have very different styles and things that interest them.

As they started going through the magazine it was obvious by what they were stopping on that they really weren’t looking for anything in particular, but they both had identical patterns to what was stopping the page flipping.  Large images and photos!

The text size of the ads really didn’t seem to play a part in what was stopping them. Some small pics had really large text… they would keep flipping. Normal size 1/4 page pics with large text… slow down, but keep flipping. Large images that were around 1/2 page… STOP! Each and every time, both women would stop on the 1/2 page images. Didnt matter what the product was, even if it was a product for a man, they would stop. Full page image and they would definitely stop.

Here’s an example of a page that would stop them. Product image on left is almost 1/2 page and I knew they were looking at the left side of the page because of where I was sitting and how their head was angled.

Here’s an example of pages they would pass by. While the products on both pages are great products, they wouldn’t stop when there were only small images on the page.

Having these two women in front of me was gold. Why? Because they’re both my target audience for my ecommerce site which sells products for women. They really reinforced what I think most experienced marketers and advertisers already know. When you’re advertising in print, especially in a magazine that people flip through, large images are a must!

If you’re advertising in a magazine and you want maximum stopping power, pay the extra money for a half page ad. Make your half page ad almost all image or photo of your product and then have minimal headline and copy.

If you’re new to print advertising, don’t go for the small ad. Your ROI won’t be what you’re hoping for. Pay the extra for a large ad or save up until you can.

Note: the SkyMall screen shots above were taken from SkyMall.com. I’m not endorsing any products shown, these are random pages selected for illustration purposes only.