Ad Placement
Posted on May 14, 2008
I often get asked about ad placement. Where is the best place to put my ad in a magazine? What size ad should I get? How about those little “business card” size ads?
The best place to put your ad depends on several factors. Is there a regular column covering a topic that fits with your ad? Where is your competition placing their ads and why? Does the magazine fall open at the center? (If it is stapled instead of bound, it probably does.) What section of the magazine is most popular to the readers? (Talk to the magazine’s editor, read the “from the editor” article at the beginning of several editions, read several editions and decide what interests you the most).
What about the cover pages? This usually means one of three pages: the inside front, inside back, or outside back. It is often a full page ad and these pages are the most expensive. In my opinion, the outside back is the best, the inside cover second, and the inside back third.
Now what about ad size? Deciding this is more art than science, but I can tell you what works best for my clients (and saves them money at the same time). Choose an island ad. It is called an island because it is the only ad on the page and is surrounded by editorial copy. I’ve found that most readers are reading the magazine for the articles and not for the ads. In reading the article, your eyes continually bump into the island ad. Compare this to the more costly full-page ad. The ad may pull some simply because of its size; however, there is no editorial copy on your page and readers will often turn your page over to find the rest of the article without looking at the ad.
Then there are those little business card ads - so called because they are about the size of a business card. If it is all you can afford, go for it. But persuade your sales agent to place your ad at the top of the heap instead of buried under other business card ads. Above all, avoid like the plaque those pages that are filled with these ads. And finally, make sure your ad is distinctly different from the rest. Are they all color ads? Then go black & white. All black & white, then go color. Use a large bold headline and little or no text. You may have guessed by now that these tiny ads are not my favorite.
And, finally, take a look at your budget. What size ad can you afford to run several times? An ad run once is wasted money. Readers will often not notice your ad until the second issue. They may not really look at it until the third. They may not read it until the forth. A good rule of thumb is to run the ad until you are getting bored with it and then run it a few months more. Remember, when you get your copy of the magazine, you are looking for your ad. The readers are not.
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