The ads are really useful. (So are the Quick Studies, Back Matter, and articles in general. It's a great magazine.)

I grew up with Physics Today, too, and the ads really shaped my knowledge of available instrumentation before I even knew what that was.

I used to marvel that people would pay megabucks for what appeared to be a white box with three electrical connections, a power plug, and a power-on light. Now, when I read those, I'm like, "Your lock-in amplifier can do what?! Expletive. How do I send you my money?"

That’s great to know! The company I work for is considering a print campaign in Physics Today. We make some instrumentation - it’s good to know people actually look at the ads!

The market may be small, but people do read them. An interesting proxy for estimating the effectiveness of ads will be to look at the hiring section (which might be gone?). Physics Today now has more competition from online physics-jobs websites, though.

I did a big retrospective study that you could compare with however many job-ads are in PT these days: https://measuredmass.com/2012/09/20/whats-the-state-of-the-a...

Mathworks has been sponsoring full-page ads with them for years, as has Hamamatsu. They must think they're getting their money's worth.

I look at the ads as a way to keep up with new developments. When SRS has a new product, or a small cryo vendor has a new doodad, it is a good way to see what's new. It does come up occasionally in a group meeting: "Hey, looks like you're trying to do X. I saw a thing in Physics Today that does Y, which, if you bend it funny, and add a line, is an X.... "

I assume they are targeted ads for physicists? I remember “fondly” the times when a website about kiteboarding would serve kiteboarding ads. Those were actually very useful. Now they are showing more blenders after I just bought one.

This is the big issue with ad networks (well, after the tracking).

I used to read a lot of geeky blogs when I was younger and they would advertise stuff that I thought was cool - gadgets and doodads mostly.

I went back to a couple of those sites this year and the ads are now mostly for single women in my area -_-

Yeah, mostly lab equipment.