Wednesday, November 16, 2011

USAT | How much for a full-page ad? up to $243K

Amid news of a major shake-up in USA Today's struggling advertising sales leadership, Anonymous@10:21 a.m. writes: "Selling ads into USAT is a damn tricky business. The ads are very expensive and customers expect to be treated accordingly, from the beginning of the sale to months after the ad has been run."

Here's a sample of the newspaper's current national ad rates:

Full page
Monday-Thursday: $125,600 (black and white); $199,000 (color). Friday: $153,300 (b&w), $242,600 (color).

Half page
Monday-Thursday: $81,500 (b&w), $129,500 (color). Friday: $99,600 (b&w), $158,000 (color).

One-twelfth page
Monday-Thursday: $21,400 (b&w), $33,100 (color). Friday: $25,900 (b&w), $40,200 (color).

Discounts
On open rates, they range from 5% to 26% based on spending levels of $250,000 to $8 million. On frequency commitments, they're 2% to 12% on frequencies from three times to 52 times. On all discounts, the term varies according to the contract.

[Photo: Darrin Stephens pitches a campaign to Larry Tate of the McMann and Tate ad agency on the TV series Bewitched.]

9 comments:

  1. Like MSRP, these are suggested prices. Almost no one actually pays that.

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  2. Okay 2:12, fair enough. And the next highest ad rates for any newspaper ad in the Gannett chain would be... where? Westchester? Phoenix? Des Moines? Would love to see their ad prices!

    MSRP or not, it's a fair bet that USAT's final paid ad prices are 10-15x any other Gannett newspaper. Now we can sit back and watch what happens when that 10x gets taken away.

    So sorry that all this is happening, how sad and so very dumb.

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  3. 2:54 You can find rate cards for other Gannett papers by Googling the paper's name and rate card.

    For example, here's The Arizona Republic's.

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  4. I'm an ex-Gannett employee and I now work for a non-profit. It's no wonder newspapers are going under. The companies that can pay those prices are few and far between. I showed my marketing department these numbers, and they laughed. One ad would take our entire budget!

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  5. 6:10, non-profits don't pay those rates. They are majorly discounted for non-profits.

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  6. Print is dead anyway, we've got online to save us now. [/sarcasmfont]

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  7. Online can't even begin to replace USAT print revenue.
    Better find a better model or layoffs will continue indefinitely.
    Polish up those resumes...unless you work in broadcasting.

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  8. Love the photo!

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  9. Both Larry and Darrin were smart enough to know better than to work for a bewitched company like Gannett!!

    Any they were goofballs!

    ReplyDelete

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