Marketers may have a high-profile advertising vehicle at their disposal that was never before available: the entire front page of a major metropolitan daily newspaper. Last week in New York, the
Daily News twice ran full-page ads that were, in effect, the front page in thousands of copies. On Wednesday, it ran front and back full-page ads for Mazda and on Friday for Toyota. There was
no second, or "real," front page inside, as is usually the case when newspapers occasionally run so-called "wraparound" ads that cover the real front page, which is a common advertising practice. The
newspaper declined to say how much the automakers paid for the ads, but advertising experts suggested they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. "To give the whole front page away seems to me a
dangerous message to send to readers," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists. "The front page is for the news you consider most important to the
community." The ads appeared in 40,000 out of the newspaper's full run of 688,600 copies and were given away on city streets.
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