When Chuck Boteler started the Newspaper Test Network in March, he was sure of his concept of providing cheap rates for new advertisers to test in newspapers around the country. And so far he's been right as the number of participating newspapers has grown to 1220 and clients are happy with the service. While things are good, he's not quite as far along as he'd hoped. That's partly because testing isn't what it used to be at agencies. "I've learned that I need to promote more than anything," says Boteler. "I need to promote and find a way for media folks to see there's a better way to do their job out there. Many agencies won't consider newspaper for test marketing. Not many agencies believe and implement test marketing as much anymore. You'd think in these days when budgets are tighter and there's more accountability for spending, they'd want to do this," he says. "The ones that do use it, love it. It's simple, pricing is great and it saves time." So agrees Mina Agnos, marketing manager at New York's Innovative Travel Marketing. "It's easy to use, easy to get rates and information I'm looking for. I work specifically with hotels and weekend business campaigns. I've used it for quite a few plans, but haven't placed them yet." Of course, Newspaper Test can't take care of all the work in a media plan. "It doesn't take long to get the plan together, it takes time to do all the coordination if there are different media in the same plan," says Agnos. But what newspaper testing can do is stretch the ad dollar. "We use smaller ad sizes and this gives us the opportunity to use larger ads at a fraction of the cost," adds Agnos. Don Andrews, Media Supervisor, Ziccardi & Partners, has placed four direct response test campaigns already and is working on a fifth for Lowe's Hotels, which has properties in many cities. "In this tight economy, Newspaper Test gets a lot more for the advertising money," says Andrews. "The CPM is so good vs. buying ala carte, we're saving over 65%." With seven clients on board, what Boteler has found is that sometimes it takes time before a plan gets implemented. "Sometimes agencies will make recommendations but we don't see results (making the buy) for months. And some are very quick." He's also overcome initial concerns at many papers. "All the papers like the concept, now that we're cutting checks, paying papers and delivering ads. They don't mind discounting so much when they realize it's new business and it's working. At first the papers didn't believe they'd get anything they couldn't get without the test service. So we're educating agencies and newspapers to counter the perception that newspapers are difficult for buying, are expensive and have inconsistent rate cards." Newspaper Test also worked out an arrangement recently with Afro-American newspapers, as well, to add a minority component, and will eventually add Asian papers and others. To date, nearly 50 publications targeting African-American readers are on board. The Atlanta Voice (133,000), Texas' African-American News & Issues Group (350,000), Ohio's Communicator Group (132,000), Philadelphia New Observer (80,000) and the Michigan Citizen (57,000) are some of the larger minority publications participating in the test network. The specially targeted publications, including minority papers, are placed at a slightly higher CPM rate ($3 addl. for each size). "Minority and special pubs have tendency to be a little higher priced so deals we've worked out with them are better values," says Boteler.
It seems Microsoft isn’t the only company to invest lots of time, money and effort into attracting traditional advertisers to the Internet. To promote the advertising available with its syndicated Internet entertainment shows, Mondo Media started with a trade magazine campaign. But the innovative San Francisco company didn't stop there. The company has developed what might be called an Internet media kit, a small folder carrying a mini CD that showcases the Mondo Side Show, the advertising platform available with its syndicated entertainment. It seems to be a compact and highly effective way to promote online advertising. The piece, which fits in a pocket, includes promo copy that supports the advertising ("Unleash a new breed of Internet advertising" is on the cover) with the small CD tucked into an inside slot. Also on the cover, pictures of a giraffe and other characters that appear in Mondo's three minute animated cartoons, which play on sites including Lycos, WB Online and AtomShockwave. The Mondo Side Show was launched in March. The trade advertising campaign in AdWeek, BrandWeek and MediaWeek began in May and continued for ten weeks, with three ads in each magazine. Mondo poly-bagged the CD in the final issue of MediaWeek that carried the ad, and distributed it to New York subscribers. It was limited to New York in an effort to reach agency executives, according to Robin Harper, Mondo's senior VP. Thousands were sent out, although Harper was unsure of the exact number. The elaborate CD shows clips from the shows along with a demo ad campaign that shows the Mondo Side Show, a multi-unit advertising package that includes everything from a small 120 x 60 pixel teaser unit to a 15 second live action commercial that plays just after the shows begin. There are a variety of elements in the Side Show and the CD shows them all, giving viewers the opportunity to see samples of the ads and how they run with the shows. "We did it all in house," Harper says, claiming the company spent less than $100,000 on it. The only expenses were production and advertising in the trades, although the cost of poly bagging the CD was partly paid by a merchandising allowance from the trades, she says. Besides distributing it via MediaWeek, Mondo's sales staff is giving it out and the company is sending it to anyone who requests it.