America's newspapers, plagued by advertising dips throughout the year that magnified after Sept. 11, have come up with a few ideas to boost holiday season sales.
The Houston Chronicle is
offering rate incentives for incremental volumes. Large advertisers who spent over $100,000 last year get discounts for every dollar they spend over that amount this year. "Some are willing to spend
more. If they're thinking of putting extra dollars into other media, it gives them an incentive to put it in our product," says senior vice president of sales and marketing Gary Randazzo.
The
Chronicle's other new program is an incentive program for the sales staff. They find advertisers or potential advertisers who could spend more with the paper and give the names to their managers. "We
go after them with full court pressure, with new creative and artists involved, it’s like a mini ad agency," Randazzo says. "It’s moving ad dollars out of direct mail to newspaper. We've generated
several million dollars in additional revenue as a result of this program."
Most of the newspaper efforts are targeted at local retailers, whose dollars are especially important during the
holiday season. The Indianapolis Star/News proclaimed December customer appreciation month for retailers and is offering a value added spending program based on incremental spending. "We give
additional ads or inches," says vice president of advertising Peter Ricker. "We've also launched power pages, full page units at an attractive price for small to medium size advertisers."
The
papers also launched a special program for the travel industry after Sept. 11, matching their schedule with free ads for every paid ad. Both national and local advertisers participated, Ricker says,
including American Airlines and Disney.
Ricker says retailers across the board have taken advantage of the programs and some service businesses, too, including homebuilders.
The
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will offer Sunday advertisers on Dec. 23 and Dec. 30 discounts of 40% for Monday ads. The ads appeal to retailers pushing last minute and post-Christmas shopping. "We refrain
from gimmicky discounts, they're not working," says director of advertising Scott Brooks. "I don’t want to throw it out there unless it has a chance to work, and this does."
Newspapers hope for
Q4 gains after a dismal Q3, with total advertising revenue of $10.6 billion, a decrease of 10.3 percent from the same period last year. Retail advertising fell 3.8% to $4.9 billion, national fell
10.8% to $1.7 billion and classified dropped 17.1% to nearly $4 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
John Kimball, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at
the NAA, admits the new programs newspapers are trying aren't especially innovative. "What they're doing is what we do every day. That's why the business is so focused on some of the back to basic
sort of things."
He wont offer a specific projection on Q4 revenue, but says "it won't be as bad as the post Sept. 11 projections. Retailers are feeling a bit of an uptick with customers back
in the stores and the malls crowded. So I think it will be pretty decent, although not what we hoped for at one time."