Nixing nudity looks like it could be a lucrative strategy for Playboy.
According to data the magazine submitted to MPA—The Association of Magazine Media, it published just under 42 pages of advertisements in its March issue, the first not to include full-frontal nudity. AdAge reports that it’s a 55.5% increase over March 2015.
Playboy CEO Scott Flanders has said that the move is an effort to attract more millennial readers. An influx of advertisements was just a happy consequence.
One crucial get for the magazine was Dodge, the first Detroit automaker to appear in Playboy in almost 25 years. “To me, on its face, it says that we are acceptable to mainstream consumer product brands,” Flanders told AdAge. This has also been demonstrated by newsstands agreeing to remove the polybags and display Playboy upfront among more mainstream publications. Another 1,200 newsstands have also begun carrying the magazine.
It’s unclear whether Playboy will be able to maintain these numbers, or whether it’s simply a byproduct of the buzz surrounding the first non-nude issue. The change was announced in October, and has been highly anticipated since. Stoli, a longtime advertiser in Playboy, told AdAge it figured the issue would be a collector’s item, so it took advantage of prime advertising real-estate with a gatefold spot at the back of the magazine. Russell Pareti, Stoli’s brand director, said, “We believed it was really, really important for us to have a significant presence,” especially since both Playboy and Stoli are looking to recruit more millennial consumers.