Overview

Advertising revenues of the Belgian magazine press were hard-hit by the arrival of commercial television in Flanders. Women’s magazines in particular suffered from a declining interest. The arrival and expansion of commercial television has though revived the popularity of TV magazines, which have seen both the number of titles and the number of readers grow significantly. As in other media, we also see the trend in the magazine press to diversify by launching “special interest” magazines.

Advantages of the magazines:

•    extended lifetime of the message (from one week to more than one month)
•    in general, high reproduction quality
•    possibility to select specific target groups (high socio-demographic selectivity)
•    suitable medium for information and argumentation

 Disadvantages of the magazines:

•    no geographical selectivity
•    slower build-up of the advertising campaign