Print Media Advertising. Anyone have experience with this?

I know some of us advertise in print.

I've advertised in print for two decades for mainstream and adult businesses.

You really have to make your ads stand out if its in adult publications.

I'm talking its got to pop out and smack you in the eyes amongst the loads of competitive adult ads.

You also have master the art of buying media. Don't believe any of the circulation figures they tell you. Half of the rags never get sold and go back to the distributor.

You can make a lot of money if your ad really works.

The rate of return is far higher with a graphical ad.

Thank you VERY much for the reply KRL. Much appreciated.

Edit: I'm using local alternative newspapers, but I'm guessing the same rules apply, right?

You mean like an LA Weekly or a City Link?

I've tried those. Had more losers than winners on those. The key is placement. If you get a nice spot they'll make you a little bit, but if you get a spot where its difficult to quickly see your ad you'll get overlooked and won't make money.

Also the alternatives are really fudgers when it comes to circulation figures. By my estimate about 2/3rd of those end up back at the distributor or just trash read where someone grabs one but doesn't really read the thing.

The reason adult magazines are good is because they don't get thrown out hardly ever. They'll get passed around in college dorms etc.

Color ads in mags also look a heck of a lot better than newspaper black and whites.

Where an alternative or newspaper ad works though is when you buy a lot of page real estate. Then you can crank. I bought full page b/w in the Hollywood Press to launch my 976 numbers in '84 and I figured the results wouldn't be that great since it was just in news box locations and not heavily distributed, but they surprisingly did amazing cause you couldn't miss the ads they were so fricking big.

Size is everything in print.

Now the other approach is quantity. When the adult mags started to get packed with phone sex numbers, we switched from full page (size strategy) to volume (quantity strategy). We went down to 1/12 and 1/6 page ads and had them on nearly every flipped page so it would be impossible for a reader not to see at least one ad that would interest them.

It got a bit more expensive but it still worked ok til the Net came along. Then I started to bring in domain url's on the ads to offset the lack of effectiveness on the phone sex stuff.