• Advertising Age, Tuesday, March 10, 2009 9:33 AM

National publishers are hoping that regional ads in their magazines will boost their bottom lines, even though the fight for local ad spending is getting more bruising. Last year, regionally targeted ads actually took a bigger hit than magazine ad pages on the whole, which fell 11.7%, according to the PIB. Regional pages fell 18% in 2008.

Some say local-media spending will keep falling even after the recession lifts. Local ad revenue will post a 1.4% compound annual decline from 2008 to 2013, according to the BIA. But industry executives say the recession gives national magazines an edge in the fight for local dollars. Strapped marketers are looking harder for efficiencies, and while targeted ads in national magazines carry a higher cost to reach a thousand readers, they run up lower overall costs and include less waste.

"In previous down markets, we have traditionally ended up," says Rob Moore, vice president at Media Networks, which sells regional pages in 40 magazines. "We take national titles and localize," Moore says. "We give [marketers] the appearance of a national buy in national books and we're able to bring it down to a spot-market basis."

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