Newspaper Advertising Costs

When it comes to advertising in newspapers there are two options – local or national newspapers.

The quality of local newspapers can vary greatly but you can expect to pay in excess of £250 for a quarter page advertisement.

One low cost way around this is to write a press release and distribute it to your local newspaper. They are often looking for relevant and interesting local news so you may be able to get your company in the paper for free.

Advertising in national newspapers is extremely expensive. As an example, it costs over £30,000 for a full page colour ad in The Daily Mail. This tends to make it out of reach to smaller businesses.

 

Magazine Advertising Costs

Magazine advertising is even more expensive than newspaper advertising. Long lead times also mean that ads must be paid for up to one month in advance of the advertisement actually being published, which can cause cash flow problems for small businesses.

However, magazine advertising does have a number of advantages, particularly in its ability to target niche audiences.

As an example of the cost, don’t expect to pay less than £200 for a full-page ad in a magazine with a readership of 5,000 people, and in may cases it’ll be considerably more expensive than that.

Always be aware that sometimes additional extras can be obtained, such as free space at trade shows or free advertising on the magazine’s website in return for placing an advertisement in their publication.

 

Overview

Strong negotiation with advertising sales people on newspapers and magazines will make your press advertising budget stretch further. Printed advertising rates are not set in stone.Expect to pay below the rate card. If you’re a new advertiser, make sure you get a reasonable discount to test response. You can expect sizeable discounts for booking a series of ads. Hold your nerve and book close to the final print deadline to get the best deal.However, do not select a publication based purely on rates.

The position of the ad is critical to its success. The best possible place for an advert is on a right-hand page, near the top. Ads next to editorial get more exposure. Other prime positions are any early right-hand page, especially next to news pages, as well as back and inside covers of magazines. These positions cost more but deliver a higher response.

Newspapers use rate cards which will tell you exactly how much newspaper advertising costs.  Here is another great article from design your ad which shows you How To Read A Rate Card.

The basic math involves the following components: the average circulation of the paper, the size of the newspaper advertisement, and the cost per thousand people “reading your ad” (really, receiving a paper that contains your ads).

Circulation Of Paper in Thousands x Size Of Ad x CPM = Cost Per Running On Advertisement

  • Circulation of Paper: Newspapers should provided you audited circulation numbers from The Alliance of Audited Media. Don’t be fooled by readership numbers provided by the paper. Some newspapers claim that their paper is read by several people per each physical copy distributed. While it may be true, advertisers pay based on circulation.
  • Size Of Ad: A full page ad equals 1, a half page 0.5, an eighth page 0.125 etc.
  • Cost Per Thousand: For a full page advertisement, the newspaper advertising costs per thousand typically ranges from $80 to $130 for a full page advertisement. For a simple estimate, $100 is good estimate.

Lets use these numbers to estimate how much running a ¼ page ad in the largest circulation paper in Vermont, The Burlington Free Press, would cost. The paper has a circulation of 31,000.  31 x 0.25 x $100 = $775

Please note that the paper is not going to reveal their CPM rate. Instead, they will list the cost to buy a certain amount of space.

Newspapers often have introductory rates for new advertisers. If you are going to be a regular advertiser or think you might be, newspapers advertising costs can be reduced with volume discounts (ie, if you run the equivalent of 10 full pages of ad space over a year); you might be able to get a discount ranging from 10 to 30%. With these volume deals, if you don’t complete the full volume commitment, the newspaper will bill you for the advertising that you run at a higher price based on the rate card.

Newspapers will try to charge you for all the preferred positions: choosing the section and the placement on the page. The newspaper advertising costs for this will vary from paper to paper, however, 25% extra would not be surprising.