The CW embeds Twitter feed in Entertainment Weekly print ad

By Natan Edelsburg 

The fall TV season is here and The CW is determined to promote their programming and start dialogues in new ways. In the current, Oct 5th issue of Entertainment Weekly the network has embedded a live Twitter feed from @CW_Network that will display the most recent six tweets in their ad. Is this type of physical embed the future of print magazines? Is it effective? Or is it just some additional glitz and glamour that will be overlooked?

My own copy of this week’s EW didn’t come with the live feed, making me guess that it was too expensive to put in every issue. The New York Times’ coverage brings up the question of editing out negative tweets, but it seems like that won’t be an issue at all unless someone on The CW’s social team decides to tweet bad things about their own programming from their own handle.

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The future of print advertising might one day rely on this type of interactivity. Although, it might be more effective to just simplify a print ad with the goal of getting one to follow @CW_Network so they can actually track new followers in the process. The magazine industry faces lots of problems and while this is a great stunt to bring attention to their fall programming, I’m not sure it’s something that makes sense to become the norm.

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