• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 10, 2009

With more magazines integrating advertising into their covers, last week the American Society of Magazine Editors finally felt compelled to voice its disapproval of the practice, which violated ASME editorial guidelines.

ASME singled out two particularly egregious offenders, Entertainment Weekly and ESPN the Magazine, but the rebuke was clearly intended to send a message to other titles that have tried similar ad placements.

The cover of Entertainment Weekly's April 3 issue, featuring Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe, includes a tab encouraging readers to "Pull this!" It reveals a promotion for "The Unusuals," a new show from ABC. ASME CEO Sid Holt criticized the ad placement because it did nothing to improve editorial content and merely distracted readers.

Holt also chastised ESPN the Magazine's integration of a half-page ad for Powerade that obscured the cover of its April 6 issue; again, he noted that the ad placement did nothing to benefit editorial content and merely served to distract.

Although ASME can criticize magazines for violating its guidelines, as a voluntary industry body it has no regulatory power. What little coercive power it does possess comes from the prospect of being shamed in front of peers -- and disqualification from the National Magazine Awards. These threats seem to be having little effect on other magazines that are putting ads on their covers, including most notably Scholastic Parent and Child and Esquire.

It's no surprise that ASME finds its rebukes falling on deaf ears. Magazines face the worst economic downturn in many decades. Through April, monthly consumer mags have seen ad pages fall 22% compared to the first four months of 2008, with Esquire down 27.2%, according to MIN Online. The weeklies are just as badly off: through late March, Entertainment Weekly's ad pages are down 39.2%.