Is Successful Farming Magazine the Future of Publishing?

Successful Farming Magazine's owner, Meredith Corp., has found a new way to use multimedia: a video inside a magazine.

The August issue of Successful Farming has an insert from Bayer Crop Science. When readers open the page, a video plays a commercial for Votivo, a pesticide that protects crops from nematodes.

About the size of a cell phone screen, the video also plays four other commercials when readers push "play" buttons on the advertisement. Now, why they'd do that is a different question altogether…

The magazine, which was first published in 1902, included the insert in 17,000 copies or about 4 percent of its subscribers, said Publisher Scott Mortimer. Meredith matched its database with Bayer's list of customers, and the advertisement also went to some farmers who have more than 1,000 acres.

According to the Des Moines media company, video-inserted advertisements have appeared in magazines only twice before. Americhip, which created the Successful Farming ad, also created similar advertisements for Pepsi and CBS to run in Entertainment Weekly last fall.

Two or three advertisers have requested information after seeing the ad in the August issue Mortimer said. "I imagine we'll see more of them. This is client-driven. It depends how much they want to push the envelope."

The U.S. Postal Service required that Successful Farming include the words "Magazine contains lithium-ion batteries" on its table of contents. This warning confused at least one reader who didn't receive the ad, Mortimer said.