A Guide To Understanding Magazine Advertising

Magazine advertising costs are different from one publication to the other and it is important to understand the rates, sizes, schedules, special editorials and others in order to get the best results from your advertising budget.

Let's take a look at some of the basics about magazine advertising in order to know which type of advertising is right for you business, products and services. You will quickly find that your options are limitless compared to your budget. The decision making process will create some difficult decisions.

Many businesses find it worthwhile to research their options with magazine advertising. One the benefits you will find with magazine advertising is your brand image, because of the hi-resolution images, color and space with magazines. Some of the other traditional media mediums do not give this level of quality. Additional benefits include more layout options and display ads in full-color gloss. You will find that you gain brand credibility with your target audience.

If you compare magazines with newspapers, you will find that newspapers have sections devoted to target readership. Magazines have an added value to newspapers in that the entire magazine is for a specific readership and make it easy to target your specific demographic. Whether the demographic is by interest, age, gender, socio-economic status, magazines are highly targeted. By leveraging the readership demographic, you have a higher probability for your ad and message to be seen by an audience that is will to buy.

We've looked at many of the positive aspects of magazine advertising, unfortunately, magazine advertising is very costly. You can manage these costs by the size of your ad and the frequency. When considering ad sizes you can get an ad as large as a full page and s small as a quarter page. Nonetheless, the costs for the size will be higher because of glossy color print.

Frequency of your ad will also impact your costs. Plan out your budget over a longer period of time and you will find that making a commitment on frequency will allow you to reduce your costs per issue. Many magazines require a minimum lead time of 30 days and print once a month. Of course if you compare this to newspapers you will find that they only need a few days for their lead time and they can print your ad as frequently daily.

Your first step in this process will be to contact your sales representative for each publication and ask for their media kit. The media kit will have copies of the magazine, information on the editorial schedule, demographics of the readership, of course the rates and an audited statement of their circulation.

Audited statement of the circulation from the publisher is created by one of two audit types. These include the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) and the Business Publications Audit (BPA). These statements are sworn documents by the publisher and then verified by an unbiased outside source. The verification is about the size of the circulation.

Here are some questions to cover with your sales representative:

* How is the magazine distributed?
* How often is the magazine published?
* What is the size of the magazine's circulation?
* What are the demographics of the readership?
* What are the special sections, editorial schedule or themes planned for the year?

Considering the budget your will be spending on magazine advertising, you may wish to consider having a professional design firm or agency develop your ad(s). If you decide to prepare the ad yourself without the expertise and experience you may be disappointed with your return on investment. A professional will be able to prepare an ad that catches the reader's attention and plans your strategy and objective of the ad accordingly to insure its effectiveness.