• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, Kristin Sidorak , March 20, 2006

More than 700 daily newspapers today will break the first installment in a $50 million trade campaign aimed at media planners, buyers and advertisers. The ads, which feature outlandish "retro modern" themes including a man riding a rooster, flying elephants and talking fish, are the latest in a media industry effort to get the attention of a relatively narrow, but extremely influential target: Madison Avenue. In the process, they are making media the fastest growing category for, well, media. While most if not all of the newspaper ad space in this campaign is donated by the papers themselves, the media industry - both industry associations and individual media companies - has emerged as one of the fastest growing of all ad categories, and new efforts like the Newspaper Association of America's coordinated campaign, and of similar ones from the Magazine Publishers of America, American Business Media, and a $200 million campaign from the HD Digital Radio Alliance, are adding to the noise level.

While pro bono trade ad donations are not measured by ad tracking firms, media category ad spending already has been surging. Last year, media companies - including broadcast TV stations and networks, cable networks and system operators, radio broadcasters, magazines, newspapers - spent $2.989 billion advertising on other media outlets, according to estimates compiled by Nielsen Monitor-Plus. That's up more than 17 percent from the $2.545 billion media companies spent advertising media in 2004, and it's up more than 50 percent over the $1.969 billion media spent on media in 2002, the year following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the beginning of a media industry recession.

"This ad campaign makes the case for reappraisal of newspaper media in the print and online world. We're surprising advertisers with the truth in a nontraditional way," John Sturm, president-CEO of the NAA, says of the newspaper industry's new push, which like new media industry ad trade campaigns aimed at Madison Avenue, taps some of the top talent from Madison Avenue. Richmond, VA-based Martin Agency is handling the new NAA effort.

"It's a good idea for media to talk about their benefits," says Mort Goldstrom, vice president-advertising at the NAA, citing the MPA's three-year, $40 million dollar "Read On" campaign, which was kicked off by Fallon New York, but which is now being handled by Mullen.

"I think this says something very positive about advertising, which is a critical message we are trying to deliver: that media, in general, believe advertising works," says Nina Link, president of the MPA, adding that in the case of this message, the media are simply putting their money where their mouths are.

One reason for the advertising step-up by traditional media, she says, is the fact that Madison Avenue's attention seems so transfixed on newer media, especially the Internet.

In the case of the new newspaper ads, the NAA's Goldstrom says a goal is to "surprise" planners and buyers about "things they probably already knew, but have forgotten, about newspapers."

The retro-fitted ads seem well-suited to do that, evoking the days when newspapers were the medium of choice. They also point to independent research findings that show impressive statistics on the value of ads in newspapers, like the 55 percent of consumers who look to newspapers for their ads - which is five times more than any other medium.

One of the ads states: "When a citizen spends as much time reading ads as editorials, it can only mean one thing. He's in the market for a new car. Newspaper Advertising. A destination. Not a distraction."