Do we need adverts in wood mags?

I actually find adverts quite helpful and informative but that’s more occasionally than every time I pick up a magazine. I do like to see new product lines and see which lines stay the course. The problem is that the mags are often monopolised by the big boys and create an imbalance in that they often dominate certain spheres of woodworking leaving smaller advertisers unable to pay the price of advertising and thereby compete for the right space.

I think it would be helpful to find t exactly how much magazines present to us as magazine content and how much is advertising. I just went through three magazines and it seems close to 27% of the page space is dedicated to advertising, but if you add in tool tests and the like as I did with one magazine that increases  to a massive 40% in one UK magazine.

The question we should be asking is how much of that is of value to us. I have thought long and hard about an online eMagazine with no adverts simply because it’s so easy to find good information about products independently through other sources that will be, a) Unbiased, c) Less biased or c) Totally biased.