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To: Bill Dupray
The present model newspapers are using is dead, has been for five years. Go ahead, pick up the phone, call your local newspaper, say you want to put in an ad for this Sunday's sport section, 2 columns by 4 inches. Ask how much it'll be, and what the exact size of the ad would be, so you can e-mail in the image.

You know what answer you'll get? Someone hemming and hawing to check the rate card, ask you a zillion questions about re-insertion, and maybe someone will be able to call you back about what formats they accept and the image size, but wouldn't you rather they do the graphics?

Go look at your local newspaper's website. Check out the rentals classified section. Is there even a key to explain some of the archaic symbols used in those tiny little ads? Nope. Why not more details - after all, it costs them almost nothing to put it on the web?

The newspaper, after bowing to the corporate advertising giants for so long, has yet to adapt to any rational pricing scheme which any human can understand. If you had a restaurant and wanted to place an ad for a special, it would take over two hours of talking to a sales person to get a single ad done. It's insane. Most newspapers used to handle their own finances, but now, getting an advertising account is virtually impossible without a very long term contract, and loads of money up front.

And so long as retail advertising continues to operate under this insanity, the rest of the paper will continue to shrink in size as they don't have the income to pay for content.

Want to spend a couple more minutes? Go pick up the local throw-a-way newspaper, open it up, and see what's not in the newsstand newspaper - advertising, from a wide variety of local businesses. They're having a great time, because they were never burdened with the insane rate card system that their ‘big brothers’ have to deal with, they have simple, no nonsense advertising sizes, pre-priced, and typically will float an advertiser's bill for monthly billing. Their actual problem right now is /too/ much advertising, and not enough content.

11 posted on 02/22/2009 5:32:26 PM PST by kingu (Party for rent - conservative opinions not required.)
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To: kingu

Great reminder of the stupidity of the newspaper advert sales methodology! Many years ago I would place employment ads in whatever local markets where our clients operated...what a pain to do so...the internet remade the whole process but the dinosauer nuzpapier never saw it coming, and these genius’s had 20 years to figure it out. The plan to save themselves from extinction was to become organs of the state and that would only work by collectvizing the federal Guv, they got their man in bo.


22 posted on 02/23/2009 2:12:38 AM PST by iopscusa (El Vaquero. (SC Lowcountry Cowboy))
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