I’m about to tell you why I won’t be renewing my subscription to Reader’s Digest: Reader’s Digest has too many advertisements!

A few years ago a co-worker of mine signed me up for a free subscription to Reader’s Digest. I’ve renewed two years in a row. But I’ve recently come to the stark realization that while I’m paying ~$1 per issue, it’s still not worth the content that they’re publishing.

While thumbing through the pages of a recent issue, I ran across an advertisement that spanned EIGHT consecutive pages! That’s longer than most of the articles! I decided to investigate this issue further. I ripped out every single page and placed it in a pile of “ad” or “no-ad”. To give Reader’s Digest the benefit of the doubt, mixed-content pages went into the “no ad” category. So here are the results:

Number of pages in Reader's Digest:.............................110
Total "no ad" pages in the Reader's Digest.......................80
Number of Reader's Digest pages that were mixed content..........30
Number of Reader's Digest pages that were 100% original content..50
Longest run of consecutive original content......................31
Total "ad" pages in the Reader's Digest..........................30
% of pages that were 100% original content......................46%
% of "no-ad" that have ads on one side..........................37%
% of pages that were 100% ads...................................27%
% of pages that were mixed......................................27%

There were only 51 total pages in this Reader’s Digest that contained nothing but original content. That’s less than half, and 31 of those were consecutive! This isn’t even taking into account the mixed-content pages that had very little content on the non-ad side. In most cases the “original content” was a title page with a full page picture and only the title of the article.

Between the internet and lack of original content being published in their magazine, it’s a wonder that Reader’s Digest is still kicking. Well, not really. I’m sure what they lack in subscriptions they more than make up for in advertisements. Personally, I think I’d rather pay more for my subscription than to be bombarded with intrusive ads.

So there you have it, a very scientific analysis (not really) that shows you that Reader’s Digest is mostly advertisements.