What is Demassification?

Demassification was a process that changed the magazine industry. Magazines narrowed their audiences by gearing stories and advertisements toward specific interests of their readers.

Readers benefit from this because they no longer need to read general magazines with a broad range of information, and look at advertisements that don’t pertain to their lifestyle, gender, age, job, or stage of life. Demassifying magazines really allowed people to learn more about their specific interests.

Magazines can break up their audience in so many ways. They can be aimed toward males or females, adults or teens, pregnant women or parents, or aimed even narrower toward people who are interested in specific topics, like politics, music, yoga, cars, knitting, or videogames. When topics are concentrated into one magazine, people can discover more about that world instead of reading only a few pages or articles in a broader magazine

Magazine companies can also benefit from demassification. A company can branch out and publish multiple titles that are aimed toward different types of people. An example is the company Hearst Magazines, who publishes Cosmopolitan, Food Network Magazine, Seventeen, Esquire, Smart Mechanics, Good Money, and Country Living, among several others. They have titles that appeal to different audiences, and they benefit from these different audiences purchasing and reading these magazines based on their interests.