• The Wall Street Journal (by subscription), Tuesday, August 1, 2006 12 PM

In its latest marketing effort, Philips Electronics is paying Hearst $2 million to eliminate subscription cards from the September issues of four of its titles, reports The Wall Street Journal. The blow-ins will be gone from Redbook, O At Home, Weekend, and House Beautiful, and each will instead run a two-page Philips ad tagged "Simplicity is not having subscription cards fall out of your magazine." The cards are mostly an annoyance to magazine readers, but publishers like them because they are a relatively cheap, well-targeted way to reach new subscribers. With that in mind, many publishers might see the program as something of a risk--but Hearst isn't worried. "We are very confident that any sort of losses from that one month will be made up elsewhere, and that's part of our plans," says John Hartig, senior vice president of consumer marketing and development at Hearst Magazines.

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