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Remember reader service cards? For our younger audience, there was a time when magazine subscribers could request everything from free product samples to printed marketing materials from advertisers in a particular issue of a magazine. All they had to do was locate the reader service number on a display ad; fill in the corresponding numbered oval on the card; drop the piece of prepaid postage in the mail; and wait to hear back from all the companies they circled.

As the nature of search and online media change, Plastics Technology is changing as well to better serve our community. Source: stock image

These cards, of course, in a pre-World Wide Web world, simplified the task of learning about various companies and their products at a time when the only other way to do so would be through printed advertisements and articles about them, or physically visiting with that ����ý at a trade show or maybe in a local showroom or tech center. As the web grew and companies enhanced their online presence, the reader service card was relegated to marketing’s trash heap of obsolescence.

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In the years since, web sites and an overall digital presence have only grown in importance in all manner of industries, including for the publishers that formerly supplied those reader service cards. If you’re reading this in print — unless a colleague passed along the magazine to you — you’re likely a qualified subscriber who has agreed to share some of your demographic data with us in return for a free subscription (pretty sweet deal!). Every month, you know your mailbox will deliver important information about the industry you’re working in.

If, however, you’re reading this online, unless a future search brings you back to our site — and we do try to write our content and structure our stories in ways that will — you might miss out on relevant future articles. Missing out could occur because of the vagaries of online search or because these days search engines and newer technologies like generative AI scrape publications for “answers” to users’ queries, with mixed results. Instead of pointing users directly to expert content sources, they serve up a mishmash of content cobbled together from across the web or a response that quite often plagiarizes the original source material.

This dynamic is one reason why on October 1, Plastics Technology implemented a content gate. What does that mean? Well, for our unique articles that are based on the reporting of our experienced staff or curated from expert industry sources, we’ll ask that site visitors share some demographic information about themselves before being granted free access to the full article. Chances are, if a search query brought you to PT once, there will be future content at PTonline that will also be of interest.

Also, by sharing some demographic data for free content (again, pretty sweet deal!), you can allow us in the future to serve you only the most relevant articles and advertising. Inboxes are so very, very full, and we want to ensure we’re not contributing to your overstuffed email with articles and ads that don’t interest you.

In the same way, filling out the old “bingo” cards with companies you want to receive more information about seems quaint, consuming content from websites you trust without connecting with that content provider directly has gone the way of the fax machine.

Tony Deligio