by Killeen Gonzalez

Created on: July 30, 2009   Last Updated: July 31, 2009

Suggestions for Launching a Newspaper Print Ad Campaign

When developing a newspaper print ad campaign you must pay attention to ad placement, ad size and shape and ad design.

Where your ad is placed will often mean the difference between whether the ad is read or ignored. For maximum effectiveness you should place your ads in newspapers where they are most likely to be read by your target audience. You can determine what type of audience a newspaper has by requesting a media kit from the newspaper's advertising department. The advertising kit will generally give you basic demographics, psycho-graphics, circulation numbers and other information that will become essential in your decision making.

Once you've selected the newspaper you will need to address the issue of ad placement. In newspaper advertising there are two main types of positioning, premium and run-of-paper (ROP). The difference between the two types is that in ROP the newspaper's editor decides where your ad is placed, whereas with premium positioning you deiced where you want your ad placed. For the purpose of this piece we will only discuss premium buys.

When making premium buys, there are several preferred ad positions that you should be aware of. Very briefly they are; full position (ad on top next to an article), three single page ads appearing on consecutive right hand pages, two single page ads appearing on right pages in different sections of the same issue, a two page spread, a full page ad on a right hand page, and a full page ad on a right hand page with a one inch column strip ad on the left page.

The ad positions that you want to avoid are what I refer to as gutter and clutter. The gutter is the inside portion of the paper where the two pages meet. Ads in that area tend to get ignored by the paper's readers. Clutter is when the page is full of other people's ads and thus you run the risk of your ad being overlooked.

Once you've determined what newspaper you want to advertise in and the ads position, you'll need to decide on ad size and shape.

Quite often an ad's size and shape is based primarily on economics. Newspaper ads are sold by column inch, which is an area one column wide by one column deep. If you are buying on a national level, the rates are often quoted in terms of standard advertising units (SAU). Although newspapers can vary in column sizes, a typical SAU has 14 lines to an inch and are one column wide. To figure out what a particular size ad will cost you multiply

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>