What to Watch: What’s the Role of Today’s Magazines Editors?

Not so long ago, fashion and beauty editors at glossy magazines were the arbiters of taste, the gatekeepers between brands and consumers. Not anymore. With the rapid rise of influencers and social media platforms, where billions of one-time and would-be magazine readers have flocked in less than a decade, editors and the magazines where they work have seen their influence wane — and the trend continues. Brands began looking in earnest at alternative advertising methods in the wake of the Great Recession and found that, not only were more people looking at Facebook and Google for recommendations on what to buy, but those platforms could offer them much more detail on who was looking at their ads and if they turned into sales, insights magazines have never been able to give. Then came Instagram in 2010, which Facebook bought for a cool $1 billion within two years of its launch, and which shined up the magazine equation of beautiful people and goods for sale by adding interactive capability. Advertisers have hardly looked back and in 2017, overall digital ad spend in the U.S. hit a record $88 billion, according to research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, with $22.2 billion going to social media

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