General Electric's sponsorship of the July cover of Popular Science becomes obvious only when it's held up to a web camera. In return for the subtle cover promotion, G.E. bought three pages of ads in the issue.
Although other magazine publishers have used cover ads to generate cash, Popular Science did not charge G.E. for the cover.
Ads on covers violate rules set by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which requires a clear separation between editorial space and advertising space. Though the repercussions for putting ads on the cover are not severe — the society sends a letter of reprimand, and occasionally bars the publication from competing in the National Magazine Awards — magazines have gone to great lengths to avoid clear-cut cover advertisements.
Us Weekly recently published a mock cover (the real cover was inside) promoting the HBO movie “Grey Gardens,” while Esquire has run covers with peel-back sections, with ads printed on the peeled-back flaps.
The Popular Science cover depicts windmills that look like something out of “Star Wars,” and promotes articles about energy. A box announces that the cover is three-dimensional. When a reader holds it up to a computer Webcam, it signals the computer to display Flash-based imagery. The computer shows a 3-D scene of windmills over the cover, and the reader can blow on the computer microphone to move the windmills’ blades.
The technology is called augmented reality. It combines a real image with a virtual one, and viewers can adjust the real image to change the virtual one. To kick-start the technology, the providers ask viewers to hold up a trigger image — the cover, in this case — to a Webcam. (People without the Popular Science cover can go to www.popsci.com/imagination beginning Tuesday to print out a copy of the cover and use the program.)
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