The millions and millions paid (seemingly) every other week to pregnant celebs for these baby pics beggars the imagination. Are they really selling enough extra advertising to support these payouts? Are regular women that gaga over actresses baby pics?
Yes, they must be.
Why should a company (or a person) have to justify how they spend their money? It is their money after all.
Here’s a list of the ten most expensive celebrity photos (as of about a year ago). They aren’t just the first shots of the baby. They are also wedding pictures and a few other things:
Sorry that’s a very Handy-ish answer. As I understand it, payment from advertisers depends on measurement of circulation. Obviously income from cover sales likewise. As I understand it considerable effort goes into studying what causes positive effects on circulation. I would assume that such magazines have, after close consideration, concluded that this sort of material sells mags. No doubt precisely what will and won’t improve circulation is something of a “black art” given the intangibles involved, but I think the answer to your questions must be yes.
Because the magazines in question may be published by a publically owned company, and the shareholders have a right to know how the company is spending their investments, and why.
I just cant see why anyone would be interested myself.
I couldn’t care less what famous people do anyway and a baby is just a baby to look at no matter whos it is.
Not only do celebrity baby pic scoops improve circulation, so does news of those publications paying huge $ to get them…people will buy the magazine just to see what the hubbub is about.
You’re talking about the management of People magazine, which wasn’t part of the question.
Some industry insiders present this as a catch-22. They need to get these pictures to maintain their standing and market share in a dwindling business, but they don’t make a profit on them in all likelihood.
Also here
So it would appear that most deals of this sort are loss leaders.
They justify it the same way everybody else justifies expenses. How do owners/managers of sports teams justify giving a .500 lifetime pitcher a $50,000,000 contract? How do owners/managers of movie studios justify paying comics $20,000,000 a movie? Multiply these by a thousand examples
Either the money is an investment that brings in multiple times the revenue in return or else the person spending the money gets fired or goes out of business.
Plus, in this era of PHOTOSHOP, who can tell if a photo is geniune? i recall when the Russian Chernobyl power plant blew up-a european magazine paid $500,000 for a photo-which later turned out to be one of a old abandoned factory!
I think the OP means in an economic sense rather than a moral one. Did People Magazine somehow increase revenues by more than $4.1 million after paying that much to get photos of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt?
OTOH can the Domino Pizza PAC (for example) justify its contributions to political parties? In the moral sense, it doesn’t have to.
Remember that a good chunk of a magazine’s income is not from the money paid at the newstand, but from advertisers. And advertisers don’t only want numbers, but also the right demographics of readers.
The people in the photos are professional celebrities. Being celebrities is what they do for a living and they will not pass up an opportunity to make a buck.
If you think the money these magazines pay for their pictures is a lot, you cannot begin to imagine how much they would have to pay in damages if they faked an image of a professional celebrity and seriously tried to pass it off as the real thing.