In this week’s N/E/W/S Report we look at the composition of the advertising in the main news section of a recent Sunday paper. The paper this week is a 20k-30k daily paper on the west coast. There were ten different ad categories represented and a total of 21 ads. The total ad space in main news was 489 inches and the average ad size was 23.29 inches.
- The diversity of ad categories is relatively high for a paper of this size. While we generally find ads for health care/medical, local retail, real estate and contractors, there were several other categories we don’t see as often. In this case, the usual suspects also had competition a local college, local and state government, a restaurant and an employment agency. Clearly the local ad sales team is doing a great job of selling to small businesses and organizations in the area.
- Local Retail (35.7%) and Real Estate (14.9%) advertisers are grabbing the largest share of voice, in terms of total ad space.
- Local Retail (188.4%) and Real Estate (154.6%) also had the largest ads, relative to the average ad size in the section.
- The advertisers in the Entertainment/Travel, Contractor/Home Services, Restaurant and Employment Services all had only one, small ad in Sunday main news. These advertisers also had small ads, relative to the average size ad in the section. In these categories, the advertisers could easily increase their share of voice with slightly larger ads. They may be the only ads in their respective categories but their diminutive size is likely resulting in them being overlooked by readers.
- In the Education category, the same advertiser ran four different ads. Their average ad was only about half the size of the average ad size in the section but with four ads, they accounted for 12.3% of the total ad inches. This is a good approach if your advertiser has many different messages they want to promote.
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