For the past five years (starting in June 2005) Skate Park of Tampa’s tech nerd Rob Meronek has been logging skateboarding magazine coverage for the SPoT’s Skater Database. In this time he has kept a record of the ad and editorial pages for Skateboarder Magazine, The Skateboard Mag, Slap, Thrasher (graph above right), and Transworld Skateboarding.
Today he released all his data in a story titled: A Nerdy Analysis of Sketchy Skateboard Industry Paper Trails. Here is how it works:
For a page to get logged, it simply has to have a skater. Even if they’re just throwing gang symbols in front of their rims, as long as it has a skater it in, the page is logged as either editorial or advertising along with who the photographer is. I put all this crazy data I’ve collected since 2005 into a spreadsheet and out popped these Captain Corporate ass charts.
While only counting ads with skaters in them skews the total ad pages numbers of the magazines a little, the data does give a great snap shot of what is going on in skateboard print advertising. Look over the data and draw your own conclusions.
[Link: Skate Park of Tampa]
Exposure-o-meter takes out. Don’t hear different.
Interesting that the magazine with the anti-commercialism/corporatism reputation (Thrasher) actually has the highest percentage of ads.
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